Report on Ministry in Atlanta, Memphis, and Dallas, as Well as Response to Attacks Upon the Ministry

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:35

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is good to be back. It has been over two weeks,

00:42

I guess. I think we did a program on Monday, if I recall correctly. So it's been just over two weeks since we did

00:50

A Dividing Line. Well, okay, I was in this hotel room in Olive Branch with this...

01:00

It looked like a Mexican restaurant in the room, okay? If we had had the really cool tables and some chips and salsa, it would have been great.

01:08

In fact, I've had a really good Mexican restaurant there. But anyway, we did record the one

01:14

I recorded, it sent to Rich. He put the beginning and end on it, put it on The Dividing Line feed, so we started this something, but it wasn't really

01:24

The Dividing Line for real, because if you don't have that background, then it's just sort of...

01:33

And my Corsair back there. Someone sent me the Corsair. Actually, someone has contacted me and said that they might even be able to get me a ride in a

01:44

P -51 or a Corsair or a P -38 Lightning. Nice, yes, yes.

01:51

I think I might take somebody up on that one, because that's great.

01:58

Anyway, so it's been a while, and I'm awfully glad to be back.

02:05

I'll be honest, two weeks, it's... I imagine March will probably actually be a little longer, but it's a long time, but it was a tremendous trip, and I want to go over the trip with you.

02:25

There were lots of incredibly encouraging things, and I'm just realizing all the stuff that I forgot to bring in today that I wanted to show you, including the little card that I wanted to encourage everybody to get to promote the movie, but I left that as well, so not doing well today as far as organization is concerned,

02:48

I guess. Just too many things to try to keep up with. When you get back, there's all this stuff you have to do.

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It's just... There's things you got to do, you know. Life goes on when you're gone, and so I've got a lot of stuff to catch up on, and other things happening, and only home for a little while.

03:06

Let me mention this at the beginning, and because I will never remember it later on once we get into the really serious stuff, but we are going to be going to South Africa, Lord willing, in March, and we need your help to get there.

03:23

I'm going to be... Interestingly enough, one of the debates, and yes,

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I still do debates despite all rumors to the contrary, one of the debates, hopefully, at least the

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Church is trying to make it work that way, will be on Roman Catholicism with a

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Roman Catholic apologist, even in South Africa, which is very, very interesting.

03:52

And so South Africa and London for March, and yeah, this is a lot of travel, and especially when we go to South Africa, we need your help at that time because it's very expensive, and it's a long, long, long, long trip, and so there is a link on the main page in the banner ads, and if you would like to help us to get there, we definitely need your assistance in so doing.

04:28

People in channel are immediately putting up the 1milliontracks .com

04:37

for the unpopular thing. I'm carrying them. I forgot to put them in the bag that I have right now, or I'd be using them.

04:46

Even today, I stopped at a little restaurant and would have left one there, but it's a great way of getting people to watch the film.

04:53

We'll talk about the film in a second. If I get out of order, I'll be completely lost because I have way too many things to talk about today.

05:00

Way too many things to talk about today. Not sure how long it's gonna take, but we'll see.

05:07

No, I have not listened to last week's unbelievable radio broadcast. I haven't had time to. Don't know when

05:13

I'll get around to it, if I'll ever get around to it, to be honest with you. Anyway, headed out two weeks ago, and we headed out early because we were doing, for the first time, a pre -conference debate, and I just realized

05:30

I haven't responded to Josh Bice's text message about next year yet. Sorry, Josh.

05:36

I'll get to it. If I don't respond that day, you might want to send it again, because that means it just keeps going down the list and eventually disappears, and I'll never remember it.

05:47

And that's what happens when you don't have a secretary to keep track of these things. So, went to Atlanta and stayed at a hotel right next to the conference center.

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Though it was, you know, it's very convenient. You can just get on a tram and go straight from the airport to the hotel and all.

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But it was still a really long walk, because the place is on the far side of the conference center.

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And I don't think there was a single day that I didn't crush my steps goal on my garment.

06:27

I really, really did. It had been really cold the week before, but there was one day

06:37

I was almost sweating coming back. It was so warm, warmer than here in Phoenix. Coming back, it was pretty amazing how that worked out.

06:47

So there was a big rainstorm one day, but nothing really major as far as that was concerned.

06:57

Different G3 conference, because instead of having it at Praise Mill Baptist Church, it was at the convention center.

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And that's automatically going to change the character of stuff, and how that type of thing works.

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So, you know, it was a little bit different along those lines. But lots and lots of people,

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I think there were about 2 ,800 people in attendance, I think, grand total.

07:29

So, what had happened, to make a long story short, is we had contacted, actually,

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Michael Fallon had contacted, I think Josh had contacted him, Mike had contacted him.

07:41

It was a bit of a long process of contacting

07:47

Catholic Answers, who we had not debated for many years, and trying to arrange a debate.

07:53

It's 2017. It's 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The primary focus was supposed to be on Reformation themes this year, and so, it took a while, but we managed to put together a debate with Catholic Answers.

08:16

And Trent Horn, staff apologist, young man, a very sharp young man, well -spoken young man,

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I fully expected him to be very comfortable in front of crowds, that type of stuff.

08:31

His first debate, well, actually, this was his first debate with a Protestant. He had only debated,

08:37

I guess, pro -choicers and atheists up to this point, including Dan Barker, which I thought, that was his first debate, that'll warp you.

08:45

Your first debate's Dan Barker, that'll warp you. Of course, I took on Dan Barker when

08:51

I was like 20, so something like that, 1920, somewhere around there, on the

08:56

Tom Likas show on KFYI, which in and of itself was a bit of a circus, but I digress.

09:02

Anyway, we debated a subject that, from my perspective, should be like the third or fourth subject in a series.

09:13

It should be the last one, because it's based upon previous things. But Trent, for some reason, absolutely would not even consider any other subject than this one subject.

09:26

So I'm like, okay, look, it's divine truth. I'll defend the divine truth.

09:32

It may be to my disadvantage, because it's dependent upon previous divine truths.

09:39

So that means I'm going to have to talk faster, basically. But yeah, we'll go ahead and do that.

09:45

It'll allow us to proclaim the gospel of grace. It'll allow us to defend the gospel of grace. And it was a subject we had done before.

09:55

As I prepared for it, my primary concern was, as I was looking at it,

10:00

I really wanted people to see how far many people who do not consider themselves to be

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Roman Catholics, obviously, they don't bow to the supremacy of the Pope or attend masses or things like that.

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But when it comes to fundamental issues regarding the will of man, regarding the nature of the atonement, the effect of the atonement, the nature of grace, these things that many, many people today are just basically paddling around in the middle of the

10:34

Tiber River. They're non -Catholics of taste rather than conviction.

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I've said this many times before. And so I wanted that to come out, and it did. It did very, very clearly.

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My understanding is today, I'm not sure what's with our video department, but the

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Catholic Answers has their version out, Sovereign Lions has their version out, and we don't have our version out.

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So, you know, don't know when that'll be, but it'll get out there eventually.

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So there'll be three versions out there eventually of the debate.

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And of course, it was shot real well. We really didn't have any major technical glitches or anything like that, and really high quality recording.

11:29

I've already told you a little bit about the debate on the previous Dividing Line thing I recorded in my hotel room.

11:36

So it's all out there now. And once I can get hold of it,

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I'm not sure who I'll be getting hold of it from, but I'll get hold of it, and I'm going to listen to it or watch it or something.

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And we will go over some of the statements because I promised to do that, and we will still do that.

11:59

Especially it was interesting somebody earlier today caught the very statement that I had written down my notes about not finding anything, nothing in the verses

12:11

I presented regarding the perfection of Christ's atonement. And someone in Twitter, as soon as they ran across it, tweeted that, and I'm like, oh,

12:21

I did remember it accurately. There you go. So there you go. So we will be reviewing that.

12:28

And then afterwards, after the debate, we hustled me back to the

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Alpha and Omega table. We had a table in the back, sort of catty corner from the Catholic Answers table.

12:45

And I just sort of stood there and I'm not, I think

12:50

I was there 90 minutes. I think it was at least 90 minutes, may have been longer. And at one point,

12:56

Michael Fallon strode by and said, sign faster, there's still at least 250 people in this line.

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And everywhere I went at G3, if I stopped, a line would form.

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And I wish, you know, I should start wearing a wire, record some of these things.

13:22

Most of the time, it's people saying they love this program. It goes all over the place.

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It's amazing the places that it goes. But a lot of the time, it'll be something along the lines of, well, you've not only, well, first of all, my theology was completely changed.

13:47

I normally throw in, oh, I ruined your life, right? And your wife now hates because you collect books. There's stuff like that.

13:54

That's a real common one. But so many people embracing Reformed theology, going into ministry, going into seminary, taking

14:05

Greek and Hebrew. Oh, there was some guys at G3, and then

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I met some guys in Dallas just a couple of nights ago, Monday night, Tuesday night. No, Monday night, at the premiere.

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There are some of you right now hiding in dorm rooms at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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And you're listening either on headphones or the volume's way, way, way down. I actually ran into groups of students saying, yep, we're the only

14:42

Calvinists they've got, but we're holding firm. And we listen to The Dividing Line all the time, and we love when you talk about us.

14:51

So press on, guys. It's good to know that we're encouraging you. Very often people come up and they'll say, you know,

14:58

I wouldn't have survived university hadn't been for The Dividing Line. Wouldn't have survived seminary. That's the real sad one.

15:04

Wouldn't have survived seminary if it weren't for your responding to the stuff that my professors were saying.

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And I've said that in my Bible study class at PRBC. I said, I know some of you get tired of hearing this, but there's a reason why

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I emphasize these things. And I've had people who've grown up in that church, gone off to university, came back and said, you know what?

15:25

They said exactly what you said they were going to say, and I was ready. So thank you very, very much.

15:30

So get a lot of that. We get conversion stories. We get people either who will say things like, I thought

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I knew the gospel and I didn't, and, or just simply conversion stories.

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I was saved through your ministry. And people saying their lives were saved.

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The grieving book. I've had a number of people come up to me and talk to me about that. And so sometimes people will ask questions, but most of the time it's to sign a book.

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The absolutely ubiquitous cell phone camera.

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I mean, wow. Anymore, it's weird is I will almost always comment when someone has a real camera, because it's so weird.

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Who has real cameras anymore? I'll actually go, that's a real camera.

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Do you not have a cell phone? That type of thing. And then we actually develop a mechanism whereby if you're the next person in line, it's your responsibility to take the pictures for the people that are in front of you.

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And some cameras are different, so it can get rather confusing at times. But anyway, so we have this long session of talking with people and it's really, honestly, it's very encouraging.

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It's tiring, no question about it, especially after you've done a debate or something like that. But it's really encouraging to hear the stories and to realize where this program goes.

17:02

So many people in the military, they can't be around a whole lot of sound churches.

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They're moved from place to place. And one of the few voices of sanity is this program.

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So it's really exciting to get to do that. The next day, I spent time in the booth set up right next to Michael Fallon and the

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Sovereign Alliance folks. And so we would trade jokes across the little divider between us.

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And Ryan Dick was there. And Ryan always makes things interesting, especially watching he and Mike.

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It's like Mutt and Jeff. It really is, isn't it? Laurel and Hardy, Mutt and Jeff, something like that.

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I don't know what it is, but the two of them are very entertaining, very, very entertaining.

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And so if I'd go into the booth and a line would start at the booth and we'd talk with folks and sign books and stuff like that.

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Mike with Solid Ground did real well. And he did real well at Founders Conference too, with the books.

18:18

So he was a happy camper, made his trips worthwhile. That was good. And again, the next day,

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I did a breakout session where I just talked about the debate. And I was really shocked. It was packed out. All the seats were taken and there were people standing in the back.

18:31

And I was just sort of going over. Those were obviously, as I said, those are the debate junkies. If you sat around for two and a half, three hours to the debate the night before, and now you're doing this, you're a debate junkie.

18:42

But we talked about some of the issues, answered some questions there. And then the next morning, I did my plenary session on the biblical doctrine of atonement as the most effective and efficient refutation of the

18:56

Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass. If you are a synergist, you have this universalistic perspective, this non -particular perspective.

19:06

If you really know what Rome's arguments are, if you really know the Scott Hahn presentations and stuff like that, you're pretty much in agreement with them on fundamental issues.

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You're going to have a hard time really dealing with them in an effective way. And so I did that as my plenary session.

19:27

And then that afternoon, I think it was afternoon that we had the Q &A with myself.

19:35

Voti was in there. Phil Johnson was in there. Steve Lawson was in there. That's right. It was Steve Lawson was in there.

19:42

Another fellow that I hadn't met before, the fellow asking the questions. And there were some interesting questions, one on hyper -Calvinism.

19:52

I was the one that brought up Phil's article on the subject that has been used against me.

19:59

And so we had some interesting conversation about that. And that was really good. And again, the first day though, so it'd be the day after the debate, once I got,

20:13

I didn't get up at the crack of dawn the next morning for some reason. It's not like I was super late, but I did get over there later in the morning and I missed whatever happened with AHA, Abolish Human Abortion.

20:27

All I heard was that they had not signed up to attend, but they sort of gate crashed anyways.

20:35

And they were distributing their tracks and stuff to people inside, I guess, even in the area where the booths were set up and stuff like that.

20:44

And so they were asked to leave. There were people there that had, were literally paying money to be able to have space, to be able to reach people.

20:56

And they were asked to leave. Well, of course, these folks have just,

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I'm sorry, they've just completely lost touch with reality. And even

21:08

Rich got himself into, how long were you staying out there that one time? You got into a conversation.

21:15

Oh, I wouldn't say it was very long. It probably seemed a lot longer than it was, but there were, there was more than one occasion too.

21:23

Because it's kind of like, you know, when you go to Sam's Club or Costco and you got the guy with the cart there with the food that he needs to give away and no, no, no.

21:34

Well, I almost never go there, but I've been there once. And he's constantly trying to call you over, call you over and enticing you and the whole, it was kind of like that.

21:42

And you have to walk by these guys. So you want to eat those tracks? Yeah. I had to walk by these guys to get to the convention center.

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From where we were. They're literally within an arm's reach of you where they were standing, which is fine.

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Look, we've given out plenty of tracks ourselves and know how this works. But, you know, when a guy's standing there saying, you know, you say the magic word, incrementalism, and they start all going on at once, it kind of caught me.

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Well, you see, the funny thing is I walked by the same people and a young man tried to hand me a track and I said, no, thank you.

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He says, you're not interested. I said, not in the least. And I just kept walking. That was all there was to it. So I didn't invest any time whatsoever.

22:27

Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand. Anyway, so AHA got involved and by the end of the conference, and I think

22:43

Rich's description was good. He said it's a movement without a leader. And then we had a leader without a movement by the name of Joel McDermott, who decided to jump into things and make just an outrageously ridiculous, abusive tweet about G3 based solely on ignorance and just being nasty.

23:06

You know, after having tried to be nice to him,

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I've just discovered that consistency over time since 2009, what are we coming up on, you know, seven and a half years of the same kind of behavior.

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You know, you just get used to it, I guess, after a while. But started a little minor Twitter thing, even to the point where it's like,

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I'm only 20 minutes away. I can be down there and we'll set up cameras and we'll talk about all the rest of this stuff.

23:37

And I'm like, this, I don't know what time. I went to bed. I had a long day. I went to bed.

23:43

Next morning, I get up and he's going, well, see, White's shut up because he can't answer. No, I went to bed, actually. It's just like, it's just, oh.

23:52

So anyway, so there was the good and then the sort of silly that came along. Also did a interview with Friel.

24:01

And I'm going to tell you something, interviewing with Todd Friel is, I've said before on this program, if you have to keep your breaths short when talking with Todd Friel, he hates dead air, almost any kind of pause at all.

24:20

And he's going to be on you like a duck on a June bug. So I, whenever you're sitting there with, but what was weird is he really did not interrupt me very often at all.

24:31

And I'm not sure if he was just tired. Someone put something in his drink. I'm not, I'm not really sure what it was, but I even mentioned it at one point during the interview.

24:41

I said, you know, you haven't re -interrupted me. He says, well, you're actually saying something interesting. It's like, oh, okay. All right, fine.

24:47

So we did an interview again on the issue of the doctrine of the mass in Roman Catholicism.

24:56

And then more briefly toward the end, the doctrine of atonement as the proper response to that, particular redemption specifically, as the strongest, most consistent biblical response to the

25:11

Roman Catholic concept of the mass. And so I'm not sure when that's going to be out or what form it's going to be out in or anything like that, but that was in there as well.

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I also got to meet Rosaria Butterfield and got to listen to the first,

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I got to listen to basically the testimony portion, not the question and answer portion of her plenary session.

25:38

And then I actually got to meet her and talk with her the next day. And she's a fireball.

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She's something else. She can take care of herself.

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Nobody needs to be holding her hand. She's ready to go. And with her.

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And then on the last day, I hadn't even worn a tie because it was

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Saturday. I was done. I hadn't done anything. I wasn't leaving till Sunday for Memphis. And so I just had a shirt on and a long coat.

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And lo and behold, they want to have a picture with all the speakers. Well, Paul Washer had just spoken and Paul was sick the whole time.

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Paul just pushes himself so hard. And he was sick the whole time he was at G3.

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So we go down front and we're taking, we take this group picture and Paul sees me and says,

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Oh, James, James, I got to tell you something. He starts telling me about a ministry that he was able to do over in a

26:51

Middle Eastern, let's just say a Middle Eastern country. I'm not going to say which one, but a

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Middle Eastern country. And I'm watching this man. And he's really passionate about what he's telling me about.

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I've got to get over there. And he's asking me some questions. We're talking about a friend of ours that we both know.

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He knows who he is. Just incredibly, the future of Christian response to Islam, really, it will be in good hands with this young man.

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And he knows who he is and he so much. I appreciate him. And Paul and I both know him. And he's just, I'm just so glad as I age to know there are people that are going to be doing it right, doing it with grace and mercy and love and depth.

27:38

And it'll be great. Anyway, it'll be great. It'll be huge. That's hey, it's post 2016.

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It's just, you know, even the verb now, that really trumps that, it has now changed, you know, because the whole language has changed.

27:56

Anyway, I'm watching Paul and he's literally doing this. I mean, he's weaving.

28:05

He's so sick. He's so tired. And at one time I grabbed his elbow and I said, brother, are you stable?

28:13

He says, no, just as honest as good. No. I'm just like, wow, man.

28:21

But he just had to tell me about what's going on in that place. And so it was something.

28:27

So great time at G3. Many thanks to Josh.

28:32

So much work goes into that. And of course, Michael Fallon and his gang made it so much easier for us.

28:39

Rich got to finally, you know, I've tried to tell Rich over the years, you know, I sort of wish you could go to some of these things and listen to what some of these people say.

28:48

Well, he got an earful of it this time and also ended up getting sick in the process.

28:54

I was out for two weeks. You were out for what, four days? Yeah. Four days, you get sick. Two weeks, I'm fine. So obviously

29:00

I have an immune system and somebody else doesn't. But yeah, you're like I was when

29:08

I first started traveling. Unfortunately, it's something you get better at as you do it more.

29:13

And I wish I wasn't all that good at it, but I'm getting better. And I'm just thankful for all the prayers as well that we managed to dodge those things.

29:25

Oh, look, more demonic faces. Thanks a lot. Uh, yeah, the

29:30

Vatican Catholic did not show up at any of these particular events, thankfully. Well, why do you think it's going to take me so long to edit the video?

29:37

Oh, I see. I got to pull out all the demonic faces. All the demonic faces. Okay, good. Anyway, so we get done with G3 and I fly to Memphis, Tennessee, get a rental car there and drive down to what's called

29:57

Olive Branch. It's going to be a Grace Bible Church. But I got there Sunday and the first event was not until Tuesday evening.

30:05

So that Monday is when I recorded the video.

30:12

And then the real practical stuff called laundry, sort of need to be done on trips and things like that.

30:20

Found a great little Mexican restaurant. If I can find chips and salsa, I can survive almost anything, which is why overseas travel is a little tough.

30:29

And what I did in Memphis, I'm going to be coming back to, but I will just mention it briefly.

30:36

We had arranged to, what had happened was when I saw the, what

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I thought was the proximity between Laurel and Memphis, it's a five hour drive. So it wasn't quite as close, but the

30:50

Lord had his hand even in that. I have wanted for a long time to get to meet

30:58

Yossir Kadhi and to talk with him, to dialogue with him. I knew that he would, as soon as I contacted him, well,

31:06

James, I don't want to do debates. He says, I'm not an expert in early

31:13

Christian history or anything like that. I'd be at a great disadvantage, but if you'd like to talk about, and so I gave him some of the questions that I would like to talk about and he said, well, that's a possibility.

31:31

We might be able to do that. And so we had set up initially just one encounter at Grace Bible Church, but then he raised the idea, well, let's see if we can't do something in the mosque too.

31:47

Let's do one in each. And I'm like, oh, that'd be awesome. At first, I thought it was gonna be

31:52

Monday night because I was supposed to go to Laurel on Wednesday. But what happened was his travel schedule such he didn't get back into Memphis until Monday.

32:05

So there wouldn't have been time to do it at the mosque on Monday. And so he said, man, it's too bad you can't stay till Wednesday.

32:12

Well, I'm like, let's, were we already gone when we changed that or is it right beforehand?

32:19

Yeah, we're already gone. So yeah, we're at G3. So we changed my travel, we changed the rental cars and stuff like that.

32:29

We did all kinds of stuff so that I would be able to get to the event on a

32:40

Wednesday night at the mosque. And so Tuesday night, Grace Bible Church. Monday night, I met with the elders and folks at Grace Bible Church.

32:47

And I'm trying not to ignore them. I'm actually looking for something I want to show everybody. I'm just not sure of the file that I downloaded.

32:54

It finished downloading after the whole thing was done, after the program started.

33:02

So that's why I'm not able to get to it. Man, it's an

33:09

ISIS thing and it's bad. Anyway, so I met

33:15

Monday night with the elders. We talked about what we were going to be doing. And on Tuesday evening, we had to be careful.

33:25

We were much more concerned, much more concerned about right -wing folks interrupting and disturbing the conversation than anyone from the

33:38

Muslim side. And so we had to keep a real close eye out, had to do tickets.

33:44

It'd be nice just to open the doors and just trust that everything would be fine. And the church found this really neat, we're going to have to use this in the future, this really neat service on Google, where you just, you put up a

33:58

URL, everybody can go to it on their smartphone, and it's for asking questions. So you can just type your question in and then people can vote on them.

34:07

And if you get more votes, it moves it higher in the list. And then Dr. Khadi and I are just sitting there on our smartphones and we can just scroll through them and we're seeing the same questions.

34:17

It's really neat. So neat that they stole it the next night at the mosque and we use the same thing. So definitely something we will be using in, it's goo .gl

34:29

slash slides is what it was. And it worked well, it gives you a unique thing. And so we use that.

34:38

So we did the dialogue. And a little bit later on,

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I'm going to show you some portions of it. And we were extremely excited about it.

34:52

That evening, now you need to understand when we do debates, I remember when we did the first debates

34:58

I did in London. As the Christians and the Muslims came into the church, the

35:06

Muslims sat on that side, and the Christians sat on that side. And generally, what happens is if the

35:17

Christian, the Muslim up front are arguing and debating, that's where the discussion takes place.

35:23

And when it's done, everybody just goes home. And so what was completely different in this situation is because it was a dialogue, because I was primarily asking him questions, there was some interaction.

35:40

I did get to say some things, but it was probably 70, 30, 65, 35, something along those lines.

35:46

Dr. Khadi, because he's the minority person in that context explaining his position, we're in a

35:52

Christian church. Because of that, what happened afterwards, and you can't see this when you watch it, but we had refreshments.

36:07

The church provided refreshments. And I'm really, really thankful to the church for taking the heat they undoubtedly have taken.

36:14

They were taking heat beforehand from people. You shouldn't have something like that in your church.

36:22

And afterwards, they had really nice refreshments. And I finally get back to that room after talking to some folks.

36:29

And what I see is not the Muslims in this side of the room and the

36:34

Christians on that side of the room. All the Muslims are talking to Christians and all the

36:40

Christians are talking to Muslims. You'll have two Christian women over here talking to two women in hijab.

36:48

And that's really important because what you're not going to see are two Christian men talking to two

36:53

Muslim women generally. And there's no animosity.

37:00

There is no anger. There is no vitriol. And yet they are good conversations.

37:08

Basically, what they did is they continued the conversation on.

37:14

What do you think about this? Dr. Cotty said this. How do you understand that? Or here in the church, what do they believe about?

37:22

Just really great conversations, discovering that, oh, you're my neighbor. You go to the same stores and stuff like this.

37:31

And just barriers blasted away, just blasted away.

37:39

I had a young man, a young Muslim man, come up to me right after the,

37:51

I hadn't even gotten to the room yet. And he said to me, he said,

38:00

I really, really appreciated what you had to say and appreciated willingness for y 'all to have

38:07

Imam Cotty here. But I just have to tell you, he says,

38:14

I have a young daughter and I'm literally afraid to raise her here in the South because of the hatred that we experienced from so many people who call themselves

38:26

Christians. And we had addressed that in the dialogue some and it was saddening to me that for many of the

38:42

Muslims, they recognize liberal Christianity and they recognize the liberals don't hate them, but they also recognize the liberals don't really believe anything either.

38:54

So they don't, they appreciate the lack of hatred, but they also sort of look at them like, you know, we actually believe what we believe, but I can sort of tell you, you know, rather wishy -washy on stuff.

39:10

And yet the people with whom they would have most in common in believing in the scriptures, things like that, those are the people they tend to be the most afraid of because in the

39:21

South, everybody's a Baptist, even if you're not really a Baptist. And so, as I said, later on,

39:32

I went into the room where the refreshments were being served and there were a number of Muslims coming up and greeting me and stuff like that and, you know, thanking me for the evening.

39:41

And a group of about three Muslim men came up to me and were thanking me for the event.

39:53

And I looked at the older of them and I said, did you all feel welcome this evening?

40:01

And his eyes teared up and he said, I didn't think this was possible.

40:08

I did not think that we could do this. And that was a repeated refrain, how unusual this was and how it needed to happen again in the future.

40:22

And I can guarantee you one thing, I can guarantee you one thing. We didn't have a debate.

40:30

I didn't refute anything that Yasir Qadhi said. I gave my perspective, especially on issues regarding the nature of shirk and things like that.

40:40

But this was not meant to be something where I'm refuting his position. But if any

40:48

Muslim in that group or anyone who has seen it in that area ever wants to talk with a

40:57

Christian about what they believe and why they believe it, in other words, from our perspective, if the Spirit of God begins to work, they know where to go.

41:06

They know who to call. They know who is going to be accepting of them and is not going to be showing hatred toward them.

41:16

They know where to go. They know where to go. And that was, well,

41:25

Dr. Qadhi and I were ecstatic. We were so pleased how it went. And everybody else was too.

41:35

Everybody else was too. Well, not everybody. Not everybody. So the next evening,

41:42

I drive up to, it was about a 45 -minute drive up to the

41:48

Memphis Islamic Center. And they are in a construction project there. And it's very interesting when you cannot take interest loans, as Muslims cannot, they actually have to use different construction techniques because you can only build as much as you have money for.

42:05

So you have to do it in phases. And then what you've built has to be able to sit there until the funding comes through for the next phase.

42:14

And so it's a challenging thing. And so we are in a smaller building that's at, it eventually will be a childcare center.

42:26

But that's where the mosque is right now. And we came in and, of course, took off our shoes and put them in the cubby holes.

42:35

And that's not so much a big religious thing as it is,

42:41

Muslims sit on the floor. They sit on the carpet. So you don't want to wear shoes on it. It tracks too much stuff in.

42:47

It's just sort of hygiene type stuff. And so we got there right as the prayers were being done.

43:00

I didn't, as far as I knew, I was going to be like the only Christian there. But there were actually a number of Christians that came.

43:06

And we only mentioned it the night before. So a bunch of people from the church made the trip and I appreciated their being there.

43:15

And we sat down right in front of the Qibla. And Dr.

43:23

Khadi introduced me in very kind terms. I'm going to play that a little bit later on. And the first question he asked me was,

43:35

Muslims don't understand the doctrine of the Trinity. Could you explain it to us? And as soon as I was done explaining it, he went on to the next question.

43:44

He didn't try to refute anything. He wasn't trying to make it a debate on his side. And I've thought,

43:50

I wonder if he gets the kind of heat we've gotten from his side. I wonder if there's anybody contacting him. How dare you let somebody in there to teach falsehood to your people and you should have refuted what he had to say.

44:00

And I imagine he probably gets some of that. But from what he's telling me, not nearly on the invective level that we've gotten from quote -unquote our side.

44:12

So had a great time, had a little fun at the end. And Dr.

44:17

Khadi was actually the one that suggested it. But I brought a bow tie along and he's wearing this collarless.

44:27

I mean, it sort of has a collar, but it's not like this type of thing. He's wearing this brilliant blue shirt.

44:34

And the last question he asked had something to do with bow ties. And so I got the bow tie

44:41

I brought out and made a mess of it because I still use a mirror to do mine and doing it for somebody else is very difficult.

44:51

Ask Kofi, I tied a bow tie for him and it's still tough enough even with a mirror to do it for somebody else.

44:58

And the Muslims loved it. They loved seeing him with this bow tie on and tied on him by a

45:08

Christian. And so that was what we did toward the end. It's on the video, you can see it.

45:15

And so we had refreshments afterwards.

45:22

And once again, we're standing outside the mosque, a little bit cold outside, but everyone's okay with that.

45:28

And the Christians and the Muslims are just standing around talking to one another. I heard one group arranging to have another dialogue in the future with their church.

45:41

And in the middle of this, two young Muslim women come up to me in full hijab, beautiful, embroidered, colorful, not just plain black, but very, very, very nice.

45:59

And I want you to ask yourself a question, in what other context can this ever happen?

46:06

And if you were asked this question, what would you say? She comes up to me and she thanks me for coming, appreciates what

46:20

I had to say, and she says, but I have a question for you. How do you deal with the effect that Roman religion and pagan religion had on the development of the doctrine of the

46:33

Trinity at the Council of Nicaea? And again,

46:42

I ask my listening audience, what would you do with that one?

46:48

Well, you know what? That one's right down my alley. That's my stuff right there.

46:55

Church history, Nicaea, Trinity. So for at least 10 minutes, she got a free lecture.

47:05

But it wasn't, it would have been different. It just would have been completely different if we had done a debate, just the whole context.

47:16

I don't think she ever would have asked if we had done a debate. And I talked to her about the testimony of the deity of Christ and Ignatius of Antioch and the real role of Constantine at Nicaea and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

47:38

And so it was just, it was, where else is that ever going to happen?

47:47

And I just have to ask those people that said, well, this shouldn't ever happen. I guess you just don't want her to ever have anyone she can actually ask that question that's going to give her a biblically -based answer, a believing answer.

47:59

I've just got to view her as my enemy all the time. Never show love, mercy, never be in a context where you can actually have these conversations.

48:10

Is that really what you want? Because when I talk to anybody who does missions work overseas, this is how they do it.

48:18

They invest their lives in these people just to earn the opportunity to show them the love of Christ and to have these conversations.

48:28

And you don't do that by beating them up verbally at the start.

48:37

You may think that's the only way it can be done, but it's not. It's not.

48:44

So we went on from there, and I left,

48:53

I drove the next morning down to Laurel, Mississippi, Bethlehem Baptist Church, for the

49:02

Deep South Founders Conference. And Thursday night, I did a presentation on Islam and what

49:12

Muslims believe and so on and so forth. It was probably one of the more passionate ones

49:18

I've done in light of what had happened just the night before. I had a lot of stories to tell. And then

49:23

I spoke three times at the Deep South Founders Conference. There were other brethren who spoke and did a great job presenting their material.

49:35

And we spoke on justification. So it's primarily a focus upon sola fide and the nature of justification and total depravity and all sorts of things like that.

49:43

And then on Sunday, I spoke four times at the church on solo scriptura.

49:49

And in the evening, I spoke on the Marian dogmas as the perfect example of what happens when you deny solo scriptura.

49:57

And so all during this time, I am starting to see the just outrageous behavior, not of Muslims, but of Christians, in regards to what had happened on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

50:15

Interestingly enough, the vast majority of the response has only been focused upon the first night. I may have missed it, but I haven't seen anybody say anything about the second night.

50:26

I haven't seen anybody because look, you watch it and here is a Christian, and you may not think

50:33

I'm a scholar or anything else, but here's a Christian explaining the

50:39

Trinity, the necessity of the atonement, just all sorts of stuff right there in the mosque with the

50:47

Muslims seated all around me on the floor. Of course, the wimpy Christians in the chairs in the back because we can't sit on the floor very long.

50:59

But what are you supposed to criticize about that? Now, I suppose there are probably people on Dr.

51:05

Khadi's side, though he has said there really has been very little of it, that would contact him and demand that he refute what

51:12

I said. But see, the both of us knew what we were actually doing, what the nature of a dialogue is over against a debate.

51:19

And so we actually did what we're supposed to do. We actually followed the rules, showed respect for one another.

51:28

And I think one of the things that some people have had a lot of problem with is I obviously respect Dr. Khadi. And people who don't believe that there are multiple viewpoints amongst

51:40

Muslims, for some reason, their people are absolutely wedded to the idea that ISIS is only true Islam, everything else is false

51:45

Islam. And therefore, if you talk to somebody who has actually been marked for death by ISIS, you're actually talking to someone who's just trying to fool you anyways.

51:55

So the idea of being respectful, in fact, even using that other word, love, loving the

52:04

Muslims you're talking to, praying for them, acting like Christ to them.

52:12

You're not supposed to do that. It's only supposed to be warfare. You're supposed to insult these people, rip their lips off, start off by insulting

52:18

Muhammad or something. That'll get them. We'll get them. That's the exact attitude

52:24

I have spoken against for my entire ministry. How many times, decades ago, in taking people up to Salt Lake City, have

52:32

I used the illustration that I'd rather have five people with me who knew the gospel and could present it with clarity rather than 50 people who could rip and shred

52:42

Joseph Smith but had nothing to give in its place? How many times have I done that? There's only a handful of people who could testify about that because there were so few people we knew back then.

52:51

We were so small. But I have. And I have often spoken against the idea of people who just want to get their theological sword bloody.

53:02

They think that the greatest example of their spirituality is that they have blood all over the theological sword.

53:10

And so they will start from the first get -go of the articles they write, debates they do, presentations they do.

53:17

The first three sentences will be intended to offend, and I simply say, close the minds of everyone that they would otherwise be able to reach.

53:29

I don't understand it. I've never understood it. So anyway, it was distracting while I was in Laurel to have all this stuff happening.

53:42

And I said almost nothing. I mean, I might, I think I made a very brief Facebook comment about a couple things.

53:49

But really just watched as this thing started snowballing and even as other people started getting involved, other people that I thought were friends.

54:06

And then contact James's church and shame him. And people, the folks in Laurel were contacted by someone through Facebook attacking me, requested to do so from these individuals.

54:23

The folks in Dallas, likewise, had a conversation. And it's just totally willing.

54:33

Here I am talking about justifications. No, it doesn't matter. You've left the reservation.

54:40

Actually, I didn't change. Well, I'll take that back. I'll take that back.

54:52

I actually want to be more like Jesus when I debate than I used to. So I want to, if I can get to know the person that I'm going to be debating, if I can treat them as a human being rather than just simply the other guy, that changes the whole character.

55:17

You know when I discovered this? I discovered this primarily in Dublin when I debated Adnan Rashid.

55:23

Adnan and I met between the two debates in Dublin and we had lunch.

55:28

And you know what? If you watch those two debates, you can tell which one's which. You can tell which one is pre -lunch and post -lunch in the sense that it changes the nature of even debates.

55:46

So many people commented on the debate at Kensington Temple in London. Well, why?

55:52

Well, because Adnan and I like each other. That's why. Now, if I'm running around ripping Adnan's lips off at every...

55:58

Does that mean I agree with Adnan Rashid? No! And he doesn't expect me to. There are just some people that trying to keep that balance, respecting someone and disagreeing with them the same, can't do it.

56:13

And you know what? That's part of fundamentalist thinking. It really is. Let's just be honest.

56:19

That comes out of American fundamentalism in many ways. There are other people that do it. That kind of thinking is all around the world.

56:25

But in our experience, that's where a lot of it comes from. Well, I'm not even done with the thing yet and I've already gone nearly an hour.

56:33

So, get done preaching Monday. The original ticketing was

56:40

I was going to fly from Laurel to Dallas, Dallas home, and I'm done. Then Emilio Ramos contacts me and says,

56:50

James, can you come to Dallas for the premiere of Unpopular, the movie? Now, Emilio had contacted me,

56:57

I don't even remember when it was, probably late 2015, and said, well, actually, yeah, it had to be in 2015 because he had asked me to contact

57:08

Paul Washer. And he had this idea. I want to put together this evangelistic tool.

57:13

It's something people would go to. It's for millennial university students. It's a strong gospel presentation.

57:19

It's focused on the atonement, repentance, faith. It's something people can pass out.

57:28

The website will have other questions that are addressed for people that watched the movie initially and stuff.

57:35

So, I think it's February of last year. So, right out a year ago,

57:41

Emilio and his guys came here to the office. We shot everything that I did, not 10 feet right through there.

57:50

And yeah, 29 minutes long. And it was supposed to be 20, so it went a little bit longer.

57:58

And so, he says, can you come for the premiere? And I said, well, the only night

58:03

I can do it is January 30th, because I can't fly through and then turn around the next day and fly back.

58:11

There wouldn't be anything left of me. And so, that put a lot of pressure on his guy,

58:19

I'm afraid, to hurry up and get things done. But they did and they got it done.

58:28

And so, I flew in and instead of just taking the next flight, picked up my bags and Emilio picked me up and we had a great lunch together and walked around in some place in Dallas, I don't know where it is, and talked and chatted and so on and so forth.

58:49

And went to the premiere. Now, of course,

58:54

I only found out later that we weren't the only ones. We sold the theater out, it was great. And again, it was a good hour afterwards meeting people.

59:04

What happened is we showed the film, then I did a gospel presentation for about half an hour, 35 minutes.

59:10

And then we did a Q &A session with myself,

59:16

Emilio and Jason Lyle. I love Jason Lyle. Jason Lyle undoubtedly is the smartest man

59:24

I've ever met. I mean, this guy, his IQ is like in four digits, it's just ridiculous.

59:31

And yet, he is humble and gracious and has this huge heart and solid theologically and such a clear thinker and just salt of the earth.

59:48

Just couldn't recommend him more highly. A wonderful, wonderful guy. And so, we did a

59:53

Q &A and I think some people were a little surprised. I don't know why, but I had some fairly decent humor that evening, despite being tired.

01:00:05

Maybe it's because I was tired, I don't know. But nobody fell asleep and we had a good time.

01:00:12

And then, like I said, met all sorts of people afterwards. Took a lot of pictures, shook a lot of hands, signed a lot of books, and hooked up one fellow with a great pastor friend of mine to talk about stuff that I just didn't feel like I had been able to give him much of an answer.

01:00:34

It would take some really sitting down and talking to folks. And so,

01:00:40

I'm still looking for this thing.

01:00:46

I'm gonna find it eventually. It was a great evening. It was a great evening.

01:00:51

And I really, really, really hope that the Lord will bless this film that, like I said,

01:00:59

I'm carrying. Forgot to put the cards in the bag

01:01:06

I have right now. But I'm carrying these cards. If you're sort of scared to do evangelism, it's a great way of getting over some of that.

01:01:17

Leave it with the check. Just make sure you tip if you do that. And leave them in magazines, in the plane or whatever, and get people to see the film.

01:01:33

It's a strong gospel message. It really, really, really is. And I really pray that the Lord will utilize it to His glory and drawing

01:01:40

His people unto Himself. But what I didn't know was, as soon as the movie was done,

01:01:48

I went up and started speaking. And I could tell Emilio wasn't in the room. It's because Emilio was outside dealing with AHA.

01:01:59

Look, when you show up at the premiere of a film that is specifically intended to be used to promote the gospel around the world, when you show up to protest that, you've lost your stinking mind.

01:02:14

You've become a cult. Okay? That's just all there is to it. You've completely lost balance.

01:02:21

Don't tell me the Spirit of God told you to do that kind of stuff. You have your cause and everything else out the window.

01:02:30

I mean, what a waste of time. And so AHA was out with their signs and doing their thing.

01:02:38

We kept them out. They didn't interrupt anything. There was concern that was going to happen. So you had to have security.

01:02:44

You had to have cops. Just ridiculous. So anyway,

01:02:51

I didn't know about that. And they were gone by the time we got out. And so I never had to deal with them or even see them.

01:02:59

But anyway, so I got home yesterday, and here we are.

01:03:06

And again, there was so much.

01:03:12

That's where some of the Southwestern students were there that I've met before. This one particular young fellow,

01:03:18

I'm not going to say anything more about him because that would be bad for him, but that I've met before when

01:03:23

I've gone to Dallas, and he's a real encouragement. And I realized there are the faithful few, even in the midst of those places where they are in the small, small, small, small, small minority, they press on and keep pressing on.

01:03:40

That's an important thing to do. So it was very encouraging, once again, to meet all the folks that were there at the premiere.

01:03:49

So what I've said is I'm going to take this time, having reported on what happened, to respond to the criticisms that have been leveled against this ministry so much so that there are now people who not only will not work with me any longer, though they have worked with me in the past, friends who now are identifying me as an apostate, as someone to be avoided.

01:04:17

The level of vitriol, the level of invective.

01:04:24

And the irony is, see, what happened was that I don't know what has happened to cause

01:04:34

Sam Shamoun to come after me the way that he has decided to do so.

01:04:41

Up through November, we had fairly regular conversations. There have been many times in the past when

01:04:49

I've had to object to Sam's language and his behavior toward others. But at the same time, if I have anything, if I have things to repent for, the first would be the one

01:05:01

I mentioned earlier, and that is, in the past, ever having done debates where the individual

01:05:07

I was debating was not a very important part of my thinking in regards to a desire to see that individual see

01:05:17

Christ in me. If anyone engages in debate that does not have that desire, they shouldn't be doing it, not as a

01:05:32

Christian. There is no place for hatred, and I think what people really struggle with is the balance between a zeal for truth, a desire to defend the truth, a hatred of the perversion of the truth.

01:05:51

That becomes all -consuming so that you transfer that over to the individual and you view them as the one that's doing this rather than the victim of having been deceived themselves or whatever else it might be.

01:06:06

And the problem is, I can't look into people's hearts, and neither can anyone else.

01:06:14

I shocked a lot of people back when ISIS first was formed by pointing out that these

01:06:26

ISIS fighters, these individuals, the reality is they look just like the

01:06:35

Apostle Paul did as he got onto his animal to head for Damascus.

01:06:41

And look what God did. And I see so many Christians that just simply want to see these people blown up, incinerated, nuked, whatever else it might be.

01:06:55

And very few of them, very few of them are praying passionately for the salvation of all the

01:07:02

Muslim people, including them, including them. And so there was more than once when

01:07:09

I, there's something, I forget when it was, I think it was last year sometime, maybe early last year, late 2015.

01:07:16

I don't remember what it was. But Yusuf Ismail sent me materials about some of the things that Sam Shamoon had said.

01:07:25

And I've heard clips from PalTalk, anybody using PalTalk is in trouble. That's just all there is

01:07:30

PalTalk is just, ah, PalTalk's bad news. But I've been sent clips that were just, this is not how a

01:07:42

Christian should behave. And if the first thing that I have to repent of is ever having engaged in debate for the wrong reasons with wrong attitudes, then pray that I will be better at that in the future, that you should be praying fervently for the person that you're engaging and for the people that are going to hear that in the future.

01:08:07

And I've been thinking a lot about two specific phrases in the New Testament, adorning the gospel or adorning the teaching.

01:08:16

In other words, by our behavior, we can either distract from or adorn the teaching.

01:08:24

We can make it even more understandable to someone when it is spoken with love in the heart.

01:08:31

Gospel truth spoken in hatred will not be blessed by the spirit of God. Gospel truth spoken in hatred will not be blessed by the spirit of God.

01:08:41

And so if you are one of my

01:08:46

Muslim debate opponents in the past, I want you to understand that I pray for you.

01:08:54

I care about you. And if I have not communicated that, part of it's because I'm just not the warmest guy on the planet.

01:09:05

It's always just sort of the way I am. I'm more of a, believe it or not, more of an introvert than extrovert.

01:09:13

But the reality is that it doesn't matter. Sam has used his being a

01:09:20

Syrian as an excuse. Well, I'm a Syrian. We're just very aggressive. Well, I'm Scottish. That means we're very closed.

01:09:28

Both of them are stupid excuses. The spirit of God, if the spirit of God dwells in you, all the rest of that stuff's ridiculous.

01:09:35

Doesn't matter. Just doesn't matter. So I ask for your forgiveness if I have in any way not adorned the gospel.

01:09:46

The other phrase that I've been thinking of is in Ephesians 4 .15.

01:09:52

Speaking the truth in love. Speaking the truth in love. What does it mean to be honest, to speak truth, but only within the context of love?

01:10:08

What does that look like in our day? How do you not compromise and yet be loving?

01:10:15

That balance is not easy, but I'm going to tell you one thing. It's cowardice and it's laziness to not try to maintain that balance.

01:10:25

It's easy to go the nuclear route. It's easy to go the flamethrower route. That's the easy way.

01:10:31

That's the cheap way out. Trying to maintain that balance, it's exhausting.

01:10:40

It's exhausting. It really, really is. The other thing that I would have to repent of is there were far too many times when

01:10:51

Sam would do something and I'm like, that's Sam the Assyrian. That's just his thing.

01:10:58

I didn't call him on the carpet for it and I should have, because there is a soft -hearted

01:11:04

Sam Shamoon. There really is. By the way, we've got screenshots out the wazoo on our hard drives here, including one where early on Sam's bullying me and saying, he better not do a dividing line.

01:11:19

He'll have to deal with me, you know, and this type of thing. Then a little bit later, debate challenges.

01:11:24

I'm not sure how you put the two of those together, but anyway. Look, the fact of the matter is there is a soft -hearted Sam Shamoon in there somewhere.

01:11:30

He almost never lets people see that. That's the Sam that I really liked and that's the Sam I'm going to continue to pray for.

01:11:38

I was very honest with him. I said, Sam, you've just got to ask yourself an honest question.

01:11:44

How heartfelt is your desire for the salvation of the individuals to whom you're dealing with, who you're dealing with?

01:11:51

Because if it's heartfelt, then you're not going to put yourself in the way. He has this thing where he defends the way he talks to people by, well, the prophets did this, so he views himself as a prophet.

01:12:07

My response was, well, okay, if you view yourself as a prophet, I'm an individual who knows my own sin, knows my own pride, and I know that I need grace and hence

01:12:29

I need to act in grace. So if you want to defend the kind of vitriolic personal attacks you launch against Muslims or now against me as a prophet, okay.

01:12:50

I'm not mature enough for that. I'm not there in my sanctification. You must be much more sanctified than I am, except for one thing.

01:12:57

The fact of the matter is Sam Shamoon cannot control his temper and the Muslims know it. And on PalTalk, they know exactly what buttons to push.

01:13:06

It's like bringing up my iPhone here and there are certain buttons

01:13:12

I can push that will make it do certain things. And it's that predictable.

01:13:18

They know exactly how to make him explode. Well, that really diminishes how much you can do.

01:13:27

When the people on the other side already view you as a foul -mouthed, angry person, and they know exactly what buttons to push to make you become foul -mouthed and angry again.

01:13:38

That's a major problem. It really is. And I tried to deal with those things.

01:13:44

I tried to be a friend. Starting in November of last year, things got quiet. Things just stopped.

01:13:52

And starting in December, I start getting these little notes from people, did you see what Sam Shamoon posted?

01:13:58

And it would be something on ecclesiastical textism, or here's someone refuting

01:14:06

James White on this, or here's someone refuting James White on that. And he's done that over the years.

01:14:12

And when I talk to him, I say, I'm just stirring the pot. Or he says, I'm a stinker, aren't I? But it just started becoming a drumbeat.

01:14:23

The reason I'm mentioning this is that this was long before the Yasir Qadhi stuff, and really long before we even mentioned that the

01:14:31

Yasir Qadhi stuff was happening. So in other words, there was already something going on.

01:14:36

I have a theory. I think Sam's trying to prove himself to someone, but I don't have evidence.

01:14:42

I don't have proof of it. So people say, what happened? I go, oh, ask him.

01:14:50

He never said anything to me about it. Shockingly, day for yesterday, it was yesterday, shockingly, and this is how far into, well,

01:15:03

I guess La La Land, I can't say that now because that's actually a movie that's up for, yeah, you didn't, well,

01:15:09

I didn't see it either, but off into the woods, into the trees, it's gotten, even brought me into, even accused me of being responsible for what happened to Aaron Kander's son.

01:15:28

I mean, you start losing rationality at that point.

01:15:33

I actually did a little bit before that. Why? What's going on here?

01:15:38

Because so much of what Sam is saying about me now, we were having fine, warm conversations while all that stuff was going on.

01:15:48

I never said a word about it. He was recommending me. There used to be stuff on his website about me and all sorts of stuff like that.

01:15:56

And now all of a sudden, everything's changed. And finally, once he finally started coming out and really coming after me, after just posting all these refutation articles, the main argument was fairly straightforward.

01:16:11

James White treats Christians worse than he treats Muslims. That's what he was telling everybody. This is, again, we have, if we have to post a hundred different screenshots, we can do that.

01:16:24

I don't want to. I have no interest in it. I have far more important things to be doing. And we can provide all this stuff, but there is the argument that I treat

01:16:35

Christians worse than I treat Muslims. There's truth in that.

01:16:43

There's truth in that. In this sense, I have a different standard for a Christian leader than I have for a

01:16:49

Muslim. And the Bible tells me to have a different standard. Let not many of you be teachers, for you have the stricter judgment.

01:16:59

There isn't, I can't see how anyone could make an argument that we are to have a higher standard for our

01:17:08

Muslim neighbor than we are for William Lane Craig. But the argument really becomes, well,

01:17:22

I'm not even going to say fallacious, it just becomes ridiculous. When Sam is sitting there saying,

01:17:28

James White mistreats Christians, and then look how he's treating me. I think maybe he's getting around that because I've been sent a number of times now the same graphic where he liked on Facebook a comment one of his followers calling me an apostate.

01:17:41

And as I said, Maury has already done that. So maybe he just doesn't even think I'm a Christian. Maybe that's where he's gone now.

01:17:47

And if that's the case, wow, there you go, from friendship to you're not even a

01:17:57

Christian in three easy steps, I guess. So I do hold someone like William Lane Craig to a higher standard.

01:18:06

But the fact of the matter is, and anybody who will honestly approach this subject knows,

01:18:15

I have never utilized the kind of language, invective, vitriol toward William Lane Craig, Leighton Flowers, anybody on the synergist side.

01:18:29

They're constant critic. But I've never used the kind of language that Sam uses not only of Muslims, but of me in criticizing them.

01:18:42

So how can you even make the argument? There's a word for that when you judge somebody else for what you yourself are doing.

01:18:51

And so it really, I will extend myself in mercy and grace to individuals who do not know

01:19:03

Jesus Christ in the hope of being able to be used in bringing them to know him.

01:19:09

Yeah, I will do that. But someone who says they know him and then either teaches falsehoods or is imbalanced,

01:19:17

I'm going to review those things, especially when they cause damage to the cause of Christ. But I will never use the language and have never used the language, and everybody knows this to be true, that Sam Shimon uses on a regular basis.

01:19:32

So the initial argument, the initial assertion just simply doesn't have legs.

01:19:38

It can't be established and having any meaning to it. And Sam never said a word about it to me, ever, in lengthy conversations, not a word.

01:19:48

All of a sudden, it just sort of pops up now. Why? Well, go back to late

01:19:54

November, early December, and you might get a hint as to, I think, what is actually behind all of this stuff.

01:20:02

But the big thing now, the attacks that already started, there is already a tremendously biased, you know, anything against me, he was posting, even though they all come from different perspectives.

01:20:19

He's even said, and by the way, despite all of this, I'm not going to defend,

01:20:24

Sam. Some people say, you're stupid. No, no, look, it's got to be truthful, got to be consistent.

01:20:35

I saw a screen capture a few days ago, or maybe a week ago, even a week ago now,

01:20:42

I'm not sure, where Sam actually made the statement that he has abandoned belief in particular redemption because of my arguments, not because of someone else's arguments against it, but because of my arguments.

01:20:56

Now, when I hear someone say that, I just remember how many Mormon missionaries I've talked to on sidewalks who had no answers for anything, and yet when they walked away said, you've strengthened my testimony in the church.

01:21:11

That's called whistling as you walk by the graveyard. Some of you have never walked by a graveyard in the dark at night, but it's obviously you're trying to prop yourself up.

01:21:25

For someone to say, I've abandoned particular because of his arguments, that's, yeah, okay, right, sure, but at the very same time that Sam is abandoning particular redemption, he's posting, yesterday or today, he posted a link to a

01:21:43

Tim Staples article, proclaimed Trent Horne the winner of the debate.

01:21:50

Do we see a future Roman Catholic here? Hope not, but at the same time going in an ecclesiastical text direction,

01:21:58

I mean, it's just, it's so scattered that I don't even know what's going on, but what happened was, and look, like I said,

01:22:10

Sam gets angry, and if you look at a lot of these comments, it starts off in one way, and then it ends up in all caps with lots of misspelled words in it.

01:22:18

That's generally indicative of someone who's writing with emotion, and you don't track your terminology real well when you're writing in that way.

01:22:31

And so what happened was, and I even saw the screen cap that I think was responsible for this, particular redemption and substitutionary atonement are not the same thing.

01:22:43

They are related as far as consistency is concerned. I mean, substitutionary atonement is a reformed doctrine.

01:22:50

There may be synergies to hold it, but I'll be quite honest with you, they do so inconsistently.

01:22:58

But in one of the screenshots I saw, Sam confused the terminology, and as a result,

01:23:06

I started, people started asking me, did you hear that Sam Shimon has denied substitutionary atonement? And my response was, no, he denied particular redemption, not substitutionary atonement.

01:23:16

If that's the case, I haven't seen it, but I know that he's abandoned a reformed position on a particular redemption, but I, no,

01:23:26

I don't think so. Well, I guess there was a Poulton Penn article yesterday or today, today

01:23:32

I think, I'm not sure which it was, was this morning? Yeah. Saying that he's abandoned substitutionary atonement, and he himself had written, again, it may have been all caps,

01:23:44

I don't remember, but a thing, I absolutely believe in this and so on and so forth. So, you know, don't accuse him of what he hasn't done, but he's partially to blame for this because when you allow your emotions to so completely overrule you, you'll make mistakes in your terminology.

01:24:04

And there was this comment that was made, and someone was dialoguing with him about David Wood, and he actually said

01:24:13

David Wood had as well. And of course, that's not the case as far as I know. And so, there you go.

01:24:27

As far as I know, he has not abandoned substitutionary atonement. He would have to if he went the

01:24:33

Roman direction or something like that. But as of now, it's particular redemption.

01:24:40

And I'll be perfectly honest with you, it's sort of scary when someone starts changing their theological perspectives just simply to have another argument against someone that they are going after and going after big time.

01:24:50

That's not why you change your theological views. So, here's the big thing. Finally, at 2 .24,

01:24:57

I knew it was going to be a long afternoon. Here's the big thing. Once I did the first dialogue with Yasir Qadhi, wow, the explosion was amazing.

01:25:14

Robert Morey, the apostasy of James White, Sam was all over it. I don't think Sam slept for two days.

01:25:20

I mean, every few minutes, somebody was sending me something else. And I was telling people, stay away from him.

01:25:27

You don't understand. If you do not absolutely agree with him 100%, he's going to turn on you.

01:25:37

He's going to rebuke you. He's going to go after you. He's going to ban you. Whatever. This is just the mindset that he's in right now.

01:25:45

There's no talking to him. So, don't even bother. Well, a lot of people either didn't hear the warning or whatever and have suffered the consequences, very expected consequences in that case.

01:26:04

So, before the second half even hit, there were people saying,

01:26:14

Sam was saying, I need to step down from ministry, call the church, shame me for it.

01:26:20

And what was it all about? They didn't even wait to see what the second half was going to be like. They didn't wait for the posting of the video from the second half, which came up, took a little bit longer to get up than the first one did.

01:26:34

So, there wasn't any desire to be fair. And that's been one of the real problems is some of these people

01:26:40

I thought were friends and yet they were willing to just throw me under the bus in no time without even having any fairness or patience.

01:26:52

Why do people today have to act in five minutes? This is what social media has done to us.

01:26:59

It has to be done now. There's no time to actually allow somebody to, I hadn't even addressed the issue and yet it's like, well, no, no, we're not going to, you're out of here, we'll no longer work with you and you shouldn't be involved in doing debates with Muslims and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

01:27:18

They're like, whoa, wow, learned a lot during that, that's for sure.

01:27:26

So, the argument was, the fundamental argument is this,

01:27:33

Yasir Qadhi deceived people in the church and you brought him into the church and you didn't correct him and you didn't contradict him and so you are no longer worthy to be followed, listened to on the subject of Islam or anything else.

01:27:49

You need to be out of the ministry, you're disqualified. So, what

01:27:56

I want to do is I want to play my introduction to the first exchange we had.

01:28:12

Are you getting the proper stuff here? Make sure capture audio is off and move this over here.

01:28:23

Okay, so you got it over there? All right, let's listen to the opening, what

01:28:33

I said we were going to be doing in talking with Dr. Qadhi at Grace Bible Church. I have been looking forward to this evening for a very, very long time.

01:28:43

It has been my desire to engage in a dialogue like this and when the opportunity came that I'd be coming into this area,

01:28:51

I contacted Dr. Qadhi and I put out the call and the church here was so kind to respond and to join with us in providing a place for us to have our conversation this evening.

01:29:03

I want you to understand what our motivations are this evening in coming together.

01:29:09

This is not a debate. Some of you have seen debates that I have done around the world.

01:29:15

This is not intended to be a debate. We are going to, of necessity, discuss differences that we have.

01:29:23

The thing that makes this wonderful and the reason that I sought out Dr. Qadhi, aside from the fact that I have learned so much from him over the years, that he's been a primary influence in my study of Islam.

01:29:36

I am a student of Islam and I have learned much from him, but the reason I specifically sought him out is because I sense in him such a kindred spirit on the other side of the chasm that divides us in regards to our theology and our beliefs.

01:29:51

He is a consistent Muslim. He believes what he says. He wants to seek for consistency amongst his people in his own practice and so when you have two believing people, one

01:30:03

Christian, one Muslim, come together and say, we need to discuss not only what divides us, but also where do we have similarities?

01:30:12

How can we live in the same community? And the most important thing is this, if we do what

01:30:19

I hope happens this evening, we're going to do something absolutely unique. It hardly ever happens and that is two communities where unfortunately there is a lot of fear on both sides.

01:30:32

There is a lot of misunderstanding on both sides and as a

01:30:38

Christian, I want to see doors opened. As a Christian, I want you, as if you are a

01:30:45

Christian here this evening, to not have fear of the Muslim people, but to have love for the

01:30:51

Muslim people. I want the Muslim people to understand that we care and that we want to have dialogue and that we're not seeking this evening to sweep our differences under the rug and say they don't matter.

01:31:03

Dr. Khadi cannot present an Islam that is just simply one view amongst many.

01:31:09

I believe in divine revelation. He believes in divine revelation. So how do we get along?

01:31:15

How do our communities talk to one another? The sad fact of the matter is that conversation isn't happening and I want to start tonight and I want to start here.

01:31:26

So if you're a praying person, that we will have understanding. If you're a

01:31:32

Christian, I want you to hear what this man has to say. I want you to understand why he believes the things he does.

01:31:38

What his life is like here in the United States as a Muslim. I want you to hear, especially when he talks about what

01:31:45

Islam is and what it is not and who speaks for Islam and all these types of things. I want you to hear so that we can have better communication with one another.

01:31:53

That's why we're here this evening. I hope that's why you've come here this evening. Please, no audience reactions or participation.

01:32:03

Let us do the conversation. We're going to have the audience questions later on. But I very much appreciate you coming here.

01:32:10

Dr. Khadi is a Muslim scholar. He has written books. I, for example, was very, very happy to receive from him a 16 -CD series called

01:32:22

Light and Guidance. And it tremendously helped me to get a basic understanding of, you know, sort of get the lay of the land.

01:32:30

He is an expert in Hadith. I think I've sort of scared him a little bit by telling him that sometimes in August in Phoenix, where I live,

01:32:40

I have to ride at literally 2, 33 o 'clock in the morning if you can even survive. And I have distinct memories at that time in the morning of riding my bike in the desert, listening to him lecture on Hadith sciences.

01:32:55

I think even the Muslims will go, that is really weird because I don't even, I don't even think they do that.

01:33:00

Can you get people? No, they don't. That's really weird. But he is an expert in those areas.

01:33:08

We're going to be talking about a lot of these things. We're going to be explaining what we're talking about. We want to bring everyone along.

01:33:14

And hopefully at the end of this evening, when we go over there to have refreshments, um, the

01:33:20

Christians and the Muslims together, we'll be able to have conversation. Uh, and many of the misunderstandings that separate us right now will be laid aside.

01:33:30

There won't be any compromise because we both believe very firmly in what we believe and what we profess.

01:33:36

So how in light of that, do we get along? That's why we're here this evening. Dr. Khadi, sir, you honor us with your presence.

01:33:42

Thank you very, very much for being with us. Thank you. Okay. I think

01:33:48

I was pretty clear. Um, wasn't a debate. Wasn't meant to be a debate.

01:33:55

And here's the issue. There are people who do not believe this should happen.

01:34:01

Do not believe that I should show respect for him. Do not believe we should be talking that the only proper relationship between us is one of bloodshed, uh, theologically speaking, um, that we should be attacking one another.

01:34:18

There should be no fellowship afterwards where we're talking with one another. That shouldn't be encouraged. Uh, this should never, ever, ever happen.

01:34:26

The only proper way is fight, warfare, clash.

01:34:33

That's it. And I've already told you what happened after this encounter.

01:34:40

What is absolutely amazing to me is there are people immediately, there were people challenging me that I'm supposed to debate them about Yasser Khadi's perspectives.

01:34:58

So I had people saying, I challenge you to debate on Surah 9. And then in this, and it was, it angered me in this, uh, childish, uh, manner and said, and you can bring

01:35:17

Khadi along. What do you think he is? My pet or something? I mean, there's, there's a reason why someone like him won't even, won't even think about engaging so many of the people out there.

01:35:29

It's that attitude. But what absurdity? I don't understand the mindset that says

01:35:36

I'm supposed to defend his position. Why am I supposed to defend his position?

01:35:43

I don't get it. Well, you didn't contradict. We weren't debating. If you don't like his position, argue with him.

01:35:50

He actually happens to know what he's talking about. He, I hope your Arabic's real well, real good, because he knows what he's talking about.

01:36:01

And I pointed out, by the way, what I was looking for, I couldn't find it in the issue

01:36:07

I downloaded, unfortunately, but twice, Yasser Khadi has been targeted for death by ISIS because he's one of those people that's put himself out there to say, this is why

01:36:20

ISIS is wrong. This is why it needs to be condemned. Here's the legal basis, et cetera, et cetera.

01:36:26

Now, if you want to disagree, fine, but honor the man for having convictions.

01:36:34

Honor the man for standing up. Isn't it amazing how many times people like Sean Hannity say, where are the

01:36:41

Muslims that condemned ISIS? They're nowhere. And then when somebody does, this is the type of treatment they get. Yeah, it's amazing.

01:36:51

It really is. So we laid it out and the initial criticisms were solely based, once you shoved all the rest of it aside, were solely based, how dare you do something like that?

01:37:05

That should not happen. It must simply be battle. Never understanding.

01:37:14

Well, you know what? Battle lacking understanding produces nothing. The kind of attitude that I'm getting sick and tired of seeing amongst people who call themselves

01:37:24

Christian apologists, Paul called clanging gongs and tinkling cymbals.

01:37:34

Knowledge without love accomplishes nothing. It accomplishes nothing.

01:37:41

So there was the introduction that he gave to me,

01:37:47

I'm sorry, that I gave to him. Now I want to go to the next night, which my opponents have pretty much ignored.

01:37:55

Don't even want to deal with that. But here we are in the mosque.

01:38:01

And I want you to hear how he introduced me. And you're going to hear many of the same themes for some odd, strange reason.

01:38:11

So let's, let's listen in here. Know that for some of you, this itself was a big move to enter into a mosque.

01:38:18

Well, you can see that everything is pretty much normal here, except that we typically don't have chairs.

01:38:23

That's the one thing that these are special for you. And for those of us, we're typically, we sit on the floor, and we pray standing and bowing down.

01:38:33

So we don't really have pews. I'm sure as well that for some of you to see those cubby holes outside reminded you of your days in high school.

01:38:41

But that's standard for us where we were placed our shoes. But apart from those small idiosyncrasies, as we were testing the mic, yesterday, we also had some mic problems at the at the church.

01:38:55

And so I marked, I remarked to James here that mic problems are an interfaith dialogue issue.

01:39:04

That one of the things that we definitely have in common are mic issues. And he remarked as well that no matter how well the microphone is set up, by the time he gets to the podium, there's always some issues.

01:39:16

And I sympathize with him, you know, the Shaykh and the and the priest, we kind of found a common ground here that no matter how eloquent or how great we have the lecture prepared, the

01:39:27

AV staff might have done a great job. But somehow, Satan gets involved in both the church and the mosque.

01:39:34

And but by the time we get to the microphone, it's something is not working. So there is a lot of room for interfaith dialogue.

01:39:42

For those of you that attended yesterday, let me just get a quick show of hands. How many attended yesterday's talk? Oh, wow.

01:39:48

Okay, so we have I would say a majority. Okay, that's good. Because today's talk is absolutely complementary to yesterday's one.

01:39:56

Yesterday, I was more on the grilling seat. And I was asked some questions.

01:40:02

I enjoyed it thoroughly. And I was happy to give my frank responses. Today, we're gonna shift the tables a little bit.

01:40:10

And I will be doing some questions and dialogues. But many of us here have never really heard directly from a minister from a person learned in the

01:40:22

Christian faith that is willing to be honest with us. We all know that, as we said yesterday, that a lot of times the people that we meet with are following understandings of Christianity that we don't really we don't really understand, we don't really sympathize with, it's rare to meet a an expert, and an erudite learned scholar who is faithful to the tradition, and is willing to share with us his interpretation and his understanding of Christianity.

01:40:52

So of course, we welcome James White. We were we introduced, well, he introduced himself yesterday,

01:40:58

I don't really have much more information other than he is very famous in his community. And he is the

01:41:04

Alpha Minister of the Alpha Omega, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries. Director of the Alpha Omega Ministries living in Phoenix, Arizona.

01:41:12

He had asked me yesterday, if I remembered how he contacted me. So I did a quick search about in my email about how that happened.

01:41:18

Yes, I did. So apparently, Shabir Ali introduced the both of us by email, I think 2007 to 2008, a long time ago.

01:41:27

And so he CC the both of us. And we had a lot of questions back and forth.

01:41:33

And I was honestly very surprised to meet a pastor online. So by the way, yesterday was the first time we actually met in person.

01:41:40

After speaking on the phone for hours and hours and hours after corresponding back and forth for almost a decade.

01:41:47

Yesterday was the first time we actually met in person. And so he was asking such detailed questions.

01:41:52

I was honestly impressed. And he was using Arabic terminology that, again, it's rare to find a minister who speaks even, you know, words of Arabic.

01:42:02

So I was very impressed. So I said, give me your address, I'm going to send you some, some CDs that I have.

01:42:08

So I sent him my most detailed CD of Aqidah of theology, which is light of guidance.

01:42:13

It's the class that I teach for Maghreb. It says, you know, two double weekends, and it's been compacted into 1617

01:42:19

CDs. So I sent him the CD set and I honestly thought he just, you know, put it on his shelf or something. He began bombarding me with a series of questions, very detailed.

01:42:29

And I was honestly just blown away. Like, you mentioned that Tawheed al -Rububiyah has three categories.

01:42:36

It's like, what? These are questions that some of my students don't even ask me, okay? How do you define shirk in this way?

01:42:43

And we're going back and forth in this manner. And it was just so impressive and refreshing, really, to meet somebody who's taking the time to research what we actually believe from the sources.

01:42:56

And then he began asking me questions about Hadith. So I sent him my CDs or not CDs, it was online series of Hadith lectures

01:43:02

I gave about the sciences of Hadith. And so he's studying Mustalah al -Hadith, like the terminology of Hadith, you know, sahih and hasan and daif and whatnot.

01:43:10

And it's just, I mean, it's very impressive to meet somebody who's going to be so dedicated to actually learn the sources.

01:43:18

All of you in the mosque know that three years ago, the far right targeted me, you know,

01:43:25

Spencer and Pamela and whatnot, and they released this fabricated audio clip, all of you are aware of it, where they, you know, cut and pasted literally snippets of my lecture from light of guidance.

01:43:35

So quite literally, they took 10 seconds here, 30 seconds there. And they constructed a paragraph in my voice that made it sound like I'm threatening jihad and kill and whatnot.

01:43:47

Literally, as you as all of you in the mosque know, but our Christian visitors probably don't know, they literally concocted a paragraph that I never said, but it is in my voice.

01:43:57

And they put it on YouTube, which is still available on YouTube, because I tried to get it down. And they and they got their lawyers involved.

01:44:03

The lawyers, you know, contacted YouTube and a long story to cut to cut a long story short, that YouTube clip, fabricated audio caused me and continues to cause me so much damage,

01:44:17

I almost lost my job. Rhodes College was inundated with 1000s of emails and letters to get me fired.

01:44:25

I began to receive death threats. This is 2013. And all of a sudden,

01:44:30

I came across a YouTube clip of James White, where he has an entire lecture entitled is it in defense of Yasir Qadhi, something like this.

01:44:41

And I was like, Whoa, that's intriguing. And I clicked on that lecture. And he defended me against the right wing bigots.

01:44:51

And he said, I've listened to that audio lecture from cover to cover. I've heard the entire light of guidance.

01:44:58

And I know exactly where he's getting those snippets from. And even if I disagree with him in theology, and I don't think you know, his his theology is right that you know,

01:45:08

I disagree with Islamic theology, he's not preaching radicalism or hatred or terror.

01:45:13

And the fact that he stood up for me, and I never asked him, he never even told me that he's standing up for me didn't even send me the link and say,

01:45:21

Oh, by the way, I'm defending you. This is something I just came across just accidentally,

01:45:26

I came across this. And the fact that somebody would do that, to me, that indicates good character.

01:45:33

To me, that indicates a purity of heart. And I find a kindred spirit in James here, and I literally consider him a brother in a faithfulness that is very similar to mine.

01:45:47

It's not the same faith. But I do not question his integrity. And I do not doubt his commitment.

01:45:55

And I do not challenge his sincerity. And I know that he feels the same way about me.

01:46:01

So that is why we have been wanting to meet for the longest time, he wanted to have a debate and a book with me.

01:46:09

And his his expertise is debating theology with Muslims and with Mormons and with Catholics.

01:46:15

That's what he has established his niches. As you all know, my expertise is in other areas,

01:46:20

Sira and Hadith and whatnot. And so I kept on and eventually, I said, you know, I just don't feel comfortable because then

01:46:26

I told him, you are more knowledgeable than I am in these particular areas. Everybody has a speciality.

01:46:32

And you know, may God have mercy on the one who is humble enough to know his own, you know, limits, right. So I didn't want to take on this expertise, because early

01:46:40

Christian theology is not my area of expertise. And the development of, you know, Christian doctrines is not my area.

01:46:46

So I politely, you know, said, you know, thanks, but no, thanks. I'm not, I'm not the person for a debate.

01:46:53

Then after Trump's election, and in the in the, you know, call up to that in the in the framework for that, we started corresponding via email, and we both sensed a kindred sentiment of dread, of what are we what's going to happen in this country.

01:47:08

And that's when we came across the idea, rather than come together for debating advanced theology, which has a time and place, and it is important, rather than to come together and talk about, you know, this and that about the nature of God and whatnot.

01:47:23

Why don't we introduce each other to our respective communities, and make people see and realize that you know what, we can fundamentally disagree without hating one another, without having to resort to lying, without having to to have anything but genuine respect, because Muslims in the audience know that, unfortunately, many people who are very committed to their faith, end up being the most isolated from us, to committed to the

01:47:54

Christian faith. And most of the groups that want to meet with us, their understandings of Christianity are very different than the mainstream that we are surrounded here in Tennessee.

01:48:04

So Reverend James White is a breath of fresh air for us. We appreciate his candidness and honesty.

01:48:11

And that's why it's such an honor and a pleasure to have him here at the Memphis Islamic Center. So I want to just start off by asking some very, very generic questions that...

01:48:23

Now, I'm just breaking in for just a moment. Catch the first question. I know are on the minds of many

01:48:29

Muslims, and I know that they've never really had somebody explain to them, with the amount of knowledge you had of the

01:48:37

Islamic faith, explain to them in a way that they can understand. Well, first I've got to ask you, is this the first time there's ever been a bow tie in here?

01:48:46

Do you think it probably is? I'm proud of myself. It is indeed.

01:48:52

It is indeed the first time there's been a bow tie over here. Yes. It's very rare to meet somebody like this.

01:49:00

My wife says the same thing. So I want to ask you a question that is on the minds of many, many

01:49:07

Muslims. And even yesterday, I got the same question as well.

01:49:13

Can you ask him to explain this concept? The average Muslim is struggling to understand the

01:49:18

Christian doctrine of Trinity and how it is viewed as being monotheistic.

01:49:23

Because again, this is something that is not comprehensible to the average Muslim mind. Excellent. So there's the first question

01:49:31

I'm going to ask. Could you please explain to us how the Trinity is consistent with monotheism?

01:49:40

And I answered the question. There were no restrictions placed upon what

01:49:47

I could say. We placed no restrictions upon him. They placed no restrictions upon me. No rebuttal is offered.

01:49:54

It is on to the next question. And there are wide -ranging questions as well.

01:50:01

That was the nature of the conversation that took place in the mosque.

01:50:08

And I've already told you what the result of that was in the opportunities, the conversations.

01:50:16

Further, doors were opened rather than locked further.

01:50:24

And there are certain people that are frightened by that. I think on the part of some, it's because of the fact that they have a certain set of arguments.

01:50:39

And if they are to recognize for just a moment that there are different views on the other side, some of their arguments no longer work.

01:50:50

Can you imagine if someone contacted Dr. Khadi and criticized him for having me in rather than a

01:50:56

Roman Catholic? He doesn't represent true Christianity. Only the Pope in Rome represents true

01:51:02

Christianity. So you shouldn't talk to him because he's not representing true

01:51:08

Christianity. Well, there is disagreement and we have debates over what defines true

01:51:15

Christianity. On this side of the divide between Christians and Muslims. And that's why we have the

01:51:24

Solas. And that's why we had the Reformation. What I'm hearing is, well,

01:51:31

Yasser Khadi doesn't represent true Islam. Only ISIS does. It's the exact same argument from the other side.

01:51:38

It's the exact same argument. They have their arguments. He has taken a stand. You may disagree with him if you wish.

01:51:46

Which sort of brings me to one other thing. We're going to wrap up here eventually because I just can't go on forever.

01:51:53

I've been sitting here for a while. Yeah, well, David Wood has sort of gotten involved.

01:52:05

In fact, I'm hearing that he's actually on – people in the chat channel are saying that he's on Bible -thumping wingnut right now.

01:52:16

What? They're responding to something I was asking them to source for me. I can't find it. I received a phone call during the show stating that David is talking about you on Bible -thumping wingnut.

01:52:27

I cannot prove that. I don't know, and that's what that's about. I don't know either. I don't know.

01:52:34

I did not understand the few things that I've seen from David.

01:52:41

He seemed, at one point, wanting to do a debate with me. That's – you know, the first thing, David's done a lot of debates.

01:52:49

I've done a lot of debates. You realize that they take time to put together and hopefully take them seriously.

01:52:58

I would think most fair -minded people should realize it's 2017. I am booked into 2018 right now and will be traveling far more than I should be.

01:53:10

But it's 2017. It's the Reformation. I'm going to be doing debates with Roman Catholics, things like that. This idea that you can just simply, all of a sudden, throw everything off and just go do something,

01:53:21

I'm not sure how that works. But anyways, he said that in April, I think, he's going to be a certain place.

01:53:27

And what he wanted to debate me on was the incoherence theory. I don't even know what it is. I think I can guess.

01:53:35

And I think what it is is this idea that I've presented.

01:53:41

And that is that the sources from which Islamic jurisprudence is drawn –

01:53:51

Sira, Hadith, Quran, Tafsir – are not consistent with themselves.

01:54:01

That you can, by setting up a set of filters, emphasize certain aspects to the detriment of others and come up with different messages.

01:54:14

This explains how there have been different groups amongst the Muslims. And my real concern is that because there is contradiction, and I see clear development in the

01:54:29

Hadith – in other words, I see some Hadith that seem to represent a more primitive tradition, sort of a source -critical analysis, and others that show a much later tradition, some that show a

01:54:42

Muhammad who is less exalted and others a Muhammad that's more exalted – because of that, you don't have a consistent ground for any one side to be able to vanquish the other.

01:54:57

Now, in Christianity, the Quran is a small document, half the size of the New Testament.

01:55:03

The Bible is a much larger document. And so, there's more foundation there upon which to make a decision as to what true

01:55:13

Christianity is. There are no popes anywhere found in that book. And so, we can deal with it from that perspective.

01:55:21

But my concern for Islam is that the

01:55:28

ISIS guys make their arguments. They reject the classical development of Islamic jurisprudence.

01:55:35

They have to. But they still are creating a filter, a presuppositional filter, through which they view even the earliest sources themselves.

01:55:52

And I don't know. Is David saying he will defend the idea that the Hadith are completely consistent with themselves?

01:55:59

I can't believe a Christian would do that. They're not. It's self -evident that they're not. So, I don't even know what the incoherence theory is other than my statement that the original sources of Islam are not consistent enough for one side to defeat the other side in debate, which is why you have this continual debate within Islam, and I can't see how one side could ever vanquish the other.

01:56:26

What is there to debate there? I mean, this isn't even debatable. Or is he thinking that I'm saying, no,

01:56:35

ISIS could never make an argument for their case? Well, of course, they can't. They have to ignore.

01:56:42

They have to. Basically, the way Yasir Qadhi puts it, interestingly enough, is

01:56:49

ISIS are the Protestants of the Reformation. They're throwing off all of the tradition that's developed and saying we need to go back to the original sources.

01:57:04

In a sense, I can see part of that, but I don't see it as a real strong parallel because they still have some other things they bring in.

01:57:19

So, I guess people have heard me saying that ISIS is non -Islamic.

01:57:26

The funny thing is I had a conversation with Dr. Qadhi about the fact that Christians have us, because of our ecclesiology and because of the fact that a person is not born into Christianity and because merely saying something like the

01:57:50

Shahada is not what makes a person Christian. We have a standard by which we can say that person is not a

01:57:56

Christian. We can excommunicate someone. There is no real ability to excommunicate.

01:58:03

Now, ISIS does it by murder, but there is a fundamental difference as to our internal capacity to be able to say, this is true

01:58:14

Christianity and we're going to cut a person off who doesn't stay with that. And the fact that in Islam, you can say someone is doing something that's non -Islamic.

01:58:24

They're holding non -Islamic beliefs, but you can't say they're not a Muslim. There is a hesitance to be able to make that kind of a final consideration.

01:58:34

I think that's where a lot of this comes in. But I don't even know what the argument is supposed to be. I don't even know what the debate is supposed to be.

01:58:41

It almost seems like if you are willing to look across at Islam and say, hey, there are some people who still hold to classical formulations of jurisprudence, which had specific rules and laws regarding jihad.

01:58:59

It had to. Governments have to have a limitation on what people can do in the way of violence to exist.

01:59:11

And so there were specific constrictions upon what jihad could be.

01:59:18

You had to have the state of jihad had to be proclaimed by the Caliph. And there were, it had to be in this particular context or this particular context.

01:59:27

And there were prescriptions as to who could be attacked and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

01:59:33

And you had to have that kind of limitation. You had to have that kind of structure or no government and no civilization could ever arise.

01:59:44

And there did arise a very advanced Islamic civilization. Now, it does seem to me, and this is something that I would like to have more conversation with people about.

01:59:54

It seems to me that that civilization broke down and part of the influences that brought about that breaking down was the very form of Islam that we see in ISIS today.

02:00:07

So I've said, it seems that Islam contains within itself the seeds of its own undoing.

02:00:16

I'm a Christian. I don't believe Muhammad was a prophet. He came after Jesus. He contradicted Jesus' teachings.

02:00:21

I see no evidence that the of what the New Testament actually teaches.

02:00:27

There's no meaningful interaction with it. I've said these things a thousand times. So why are people interpreting me just because I can respect someone and show love for someone and mercy towards someone and have a decent relationship with someone on the other side that I somehow have changed all of that?

02:00:46

I don't get it. I don't get it. But there it is. So, you know,

02:00:53

I haven't seen David calling me an apostate yet. I hope that's not what's happening right now.

02:00:59

I'd be really disappointed if it was. But given what's happened over the past number of weeks, it wouldn't be the first disappointment that I would be experiencing.

02:01:08

Would not. It would not. So there you go, folks. Do you think it's a good thing to open up doors so that a young Muslim woman walks up to me and asks about how

02:01:26

I understand the development of the Trinity, the Council of Nicaea, and then allows a full response and thanks me for it?

02:01:36

That would not have happened after a debate. That would not have happened after a debate. Am I going to stop doing debates?

02:01:43

No. They serve an important purpose.

02:01:49

And both Yasir Qadhi and I said that. He even said there is a place for that strong disagreement and going at those things.

02:01:57

We're not saying that at all. All we're saying is that's not all there is.

02:02:03

There is more. And folks, all around the world, in Islamic countries, what you saw me modeling there is exactly how people have been presenting the gospel.

02:02:15

They have to. You can't do debates in those places. You can't stay on the street corner and pass out tracts.

02:02:21

You have to invest your life in people. And you can either do that grudgingly and without real compassion, or you can do it because you really love these people.

02:02:32

And so, I'm going to close with this. To all of my critics out there,

02:02:40

I just want to look you in the eye. I want to look into your heart and want to ask you a simple question.

02:02:50

Do you fervently pray for the salvation of not just the vague, cloudy

02:03:01

Muslim people? Do you pray for the salvation of the people that you're interacting with?

02:03:10

If you have online discussions, even debates, do you pray with love in your heart that the

02:03:19

Lord would use you to be the one to show his love to that individual? Not just, oh yes,

02:03:26

I pray that God allow me to thrust my theological sword right through his black little heart and he'll get saved.

02:03:32

Not that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actually desiring to model, to be the instrument of demonstrating

02:03:45

Christ's love to someone without compromise. And see, that's what you all don't get, is because I think some of you so fear that that will lead to compromise that you just, you can't even think that it's a possibility.

02:03:59

You can't even think it's a possibility. So folks, if you've listened to all of this and you're like, okay, we've heard it, you've gone far enough, it's time to wrap it up.

02:04:10

Okay. But please realize something. These folks are contacting my overseas associates saying they should disassociate from me.

02:04:22

There are a lot of people that are afraid of people like Sam Shimon. He doesn't stop.

02:04:30

He's very zealous. And they are, they're not going to stop no matter what is said, unless, you know,

02:04:43

I pray that the Lord would deal with Sam's heart. But we're going to have to be answering questions

02:04:54

I've already had. Every place that I went to last week, the churches had already been contacted. Churches already been contacted.

02:05:01

And I've got to try to explain, well, you know, this person's doing this, and this is why this person's saying that. It adds in another layer, especially given some of the topics we address.

02:05:12

There will be people who will not have us in to talk about these things because of this.

02:05:19

It's going to happen. So we'd appreciate your prayers and that opportunities like this would not be lost simply because there are people who fear and people who are engaging in this kind of behavior.

02:05:36

But there's the whole story. Next week, Lord willing, I hopefully will have time over the weekend to work through and grab clips from the debate.

02:05:49

There's lots of other stuff going on, too. I mean, stuff on transgenderism and there's just a lot of things happening that we need to get back to.

02:06:01

And so lots to talk about on the dividing line. We want to make sure that what we're talking about is relevant to the whole body because, man, one thing is for certain, the

02:06:10

Lord has allowed this program to go all, literally all over the world. So we want it to be useful in all those places.

02:06:17

So whether you're just listening while jogging, working out, doing, driving, lots of people while driving to and from work, at work, people who are security guards love to listen to the dividing line and love long dividing lines because it gives them a little something more to do.

02:06:36

Or whether you're hiding, hiding in a dorm room at one of those schools.