A Wide Variety Of Topics

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August 20, 2013

Since I am headed for Pryor, Oklahoma, on Thursday, this will be the only DL this week. Did a Jumbo on…well, again, a wide, wide variety of topics. Mainly focused on responding to Yusuf Ismail, but, really, covered a wide range of topics, some really important concepts, such as “demythologizing scholarship” and the like. Did start off with a few comments on the Chris Pinto/William Schnoebelen issue I stumbled over just yesterday, playing a portion of Schnoebelen claiming to have been, yes, a vampire.

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00:20: Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
00:27: The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
00:35: Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
00:41: This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll -free across the
00:51: United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
00:58: James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, another jumbo edition of the program today.
01:06: Looks like the only one this week, however, because I'll be leaving on Thursday.
01:11: Evidently, given the airline that I prefer to fly for certain obvious reasons, it will take me as long to get to Tulsa, Oklahoma as it would to get to New York.
01:23: Not much in the way of straight -in flights there, so I won't be having a program on Thursday and hopefully going to stay pretty busy while we are there.
01:36: So we will make do with the time that we have. I just have to mention this.
01:46: One of the tweets that I woke up to this morning, you know, you get up, you wake the system up, it starts doing its thing, and there was a tweet from someone
01:56: I've never seen before called Mojina, M -O -H -J -I -N -A, Dr.
02:01: Oakley 1689, man it is easy to crit, C -R -I -T -T, I assume it's criticized, other people, when they're,
02:09: T -H -E -I -R, not there to defend themselves, invite Zakir Naik for a debate,
02:14: I dare you. Well you have any idea how long we've been inviting, challenging
02:22: Zakir Naik to debate? I would debate him at the drop of a hat. You better believe it.
02:29: Would love to take on Zakir Naik. He would be very enjoyable to debate, because his arguments are so easily refuted.
02:40: But I think he knows that, and so that's why he won't debate. We have contacted his people, well you have to guarantee 10 ,000 people will be there, and all the rest is kind of stuff, and it's like, okay, fine.
02:52: We invite him to be on satellite TV for a worldwide audience, we have invited
02:58: Zakir Naik to really debate many, many times, and if you can get him to do it, that would be wonderful.
03:05: That would be wonderful. Why don't you, why don't you do that? Yes, I saw someone in a channel mention the fact that New Jersey has become the second state to demonstrate that the concept of morality and worldview is no longer relevant to anyone in office.
03:26: It doesn't matter what political party anymore, Democrats, Republicans, both, it doesn't matter.
03:32: Chris Christie, allegedly a Republican, still signs a bill criminalizing reversion therapy, as they call it.
03:42: In other words, if you have a minor that doesn't want to be homosexual, don't you dare say a word, because you see, the people who really matter, the people with the uber rights, they detest former gays.
03:55: They detest them. Because if someone can actually leave that lifestyle, then that just exposes their entire agenda.
04:05: So, anyway, yeah, I noticed that today as well, and I just shook my head and said, nope, there is nobody left in politics that even begins to represent my worldview.
04:18: Doesn't matter which party, I left both those parties a long time ago. That was, how long ago was that?
04:23: That was at least a decade or more ago. Left them a long time ago. Utter corruption.
04:29: Anyways, I ran into something. This is weird.
04:36: Okay, I need to talk about this, because word has gotten out,
04:43: Chris Rosbaugh has asked me to do a debate with this guy named
04:48: Chris Pinto. Now, I know next to nothing about Chris Pinto. I'd never even heard of Chris Pinto until I think it may have been
04:57: Alan Kirshner in Channel was talking about him. I had never heard of him. You know, it seems like right now, whenever I have, you know,
05:07: I'm falling behind and getting a book done. I've got all this focus I need to be having in preparation for South Africa.
05:14: That's when everything weird happens. That's when people just come out of the woodwork and they're all demanding that I watch this respond to that, debate this guy, get involved with this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
05:26: And I'm not sure why I'm the only one that can do all these things. But anyway, obviously,
05:31: I'm not. But that's how people would like to pretend that it is. Anyhow, so Chris contacts me and he says, you know, will you come on the program?
05:43: And his he's put out this documentary. He's into conspiracy theories.
05:48: OK, I guess he's TR only King James only camp type thing.
05:54: And the whole thing is Codex Sinaiticus is a Jesuit conspiracy. It was produced by a guy named
06:02: Simonides and it's not real and it's not ancient. And would you come on?
06:08: Well, you know, the first thoughts across my mind, sort of like when Mr. Cooper called last week.
06:16: Evidently, I was a I guess I was a big meanie from what he said on his blog.
06:21: And so I haven't even read his stuff, but people have been quoting it and channel. I'm a big meanie. Because I actually used
06:26: Greek. Now, of course, I had used that before he came on, because I think anyone who's listened to this program for almost the same amount of time and all knows that when
06:35: I'm dealing in depth with the text, I will I will read the text and then translate it.
06:40: And I deal with the original language. I mean, when we were talking about.
06:48: First Corinthians eight and its testimony to Paul's understanding of the nature of God and his application, the language of the
06:55: Shema to of chaos and chaos and so on and so forth. What did
07:00: I do? I I read it. You have to heist chaos, heist chaos. Our our audience is accustomed to that.
07:09: Well, I guess that was just very mean of me to do that, that I dared ask Mr. Cooper to do that.
07:15: But the problem was, I just assumed that he would be able to do that. I assumed if you're going to make the kind of assertions he was making, that you'd be able to deal with the language directly in that way.
07:24: And I guess my assumption was, I don't know why I assumed this. I guess I try to assume the best, at least initially, until I'm given reason to stop assuming that.
07:35: I assume that there would be some meaningful argumentation to this
07:43: Chris Pinto theory. Well, I don't even remember how
07:48: I ran into this last night. Now I think about it, it must have been somebody in channel, I guess.
07:57: But I ran into some controversy that's going on. And here's an article from August 18th by Chris Pinto, an open letter from Chris Pinto to Christine Pack on her public attacks, mischaracterizations, and tailbearing about him and his ministry.
08:15: And I started looking at this, and so I start following some links. And lo and behold, the third paragraph says, the gist of Mrs.
08:25: Pack's accusations have been that we included former Freemason and occultist Bill Schnabelin.
08:30: Remember Bill Schnabelin? Remember that name? William Schnabelin? Yeah! I'm sorry? This, we're talking a long time ago.
08:38: I had to go digging. I had to go digging in our own website. That's why I was saying I can't, I was having trouble bringing up the articles thing.
08:46: Former Mormon, allegedly, who, there's an article on our website.
08:52: If you go to the 1996 Vintage, okay, 2000
08:58: Vintage articles section, which I continue to hold out hope someday will be in some form other than that was in 2000, which you say is right around the corner, right?
09:14: You didn't say that's right. Anyway! There's a difference between on the horizon and around the corner.
09:21: Okay, well, yeah, all right. It's on the horizon. Okay. Just over the next hill.
09:27: Wasn't it the horizon that burned out in the Gulf? Wasn't that the deep water horizon?
09:32: Deep water horizon. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, well we might be in deep water when we get there. That's exactly right. Anyway, I found today an article,
09:39: I knew that there was something on our website about William Schnabelin, and it's, if you just go to vintage .aomn
09:45: .org slash Schnabelin, capital S, then C -H -N -O -E -B -E -L -E -N dot html.
09:53: From February of 97, so over 16 years ago, a response to William Schnabelin's conversion to KJV -onlyism.
10:04: And so there's a fairly lengthy little article, well, I guess it's not all that long, but I quote
10:11: Schnabelin given his KJV -only spiel and respond to it.
10:16: And I think that's pretty much all of our said about it. But at the time I thought, you know, this guy is, you know, he's always talking about the temple and I was getting the
10:25: KJV -onlyism and it just seems just seems a little weird, but there's nothing in here about what
10:31: I've what I've found since then, especially today. So I'm reading this thing from Pinto and he says, the gist of Mrs.
10:44: Pack's accusations have been that we included former Freemason and cultist Bill Schnabelin in two of our documentaries and that his testimony is allegedly fabricated.
10:52: Mrs. Pack has asserted that we failed to do our due diligence in proving Bill's credibility and that we should have known better than to interview someone who has supposedly been discredited as a charlatan beforehand, yet at this very hour we know of no one who has proven such assertions about Bill Schnabelin.
11:06: And so a couple, three paragraphs are given and primarily the argument is, well,
11:12: Ed Decker, Dave Hunt, and I guess he co -authored a book with Bill Spencer, but Ed Decker, Dave Hunt, and Ron Carlson are the ones that have spoken with him and said nothing negative about him.
11:31: Well, of course, I've spoken with Dave Hunt, so I'm not sure that would necessarily go anywhere, but I'm sort of like, yeah, but that's not good enough for me.
11:44: And so I followed a few links around and Mrs.
11:51: Pack, her article was significantly more cogent than Mr.
12:00: Pintos was. And she embedded a video. She embedded a video.
12:06: Now I can't play all of it. It's that weird. It is that weird. But here is a here is a
12:13: Bill Schnabelin with these.
12:21: He's got he's got a beard, this big, huge, massive beard.
12:30: And I looked around a little bit. This is this is a multi hour interview. I'm going to play a little bit because, like I said, it just gets
12:38: I think it just gets too weird. It just gets too weird. Before I play this, before I play this, what
12:49: I saw, yeah, Anthony Buzzard, who did this now? Oh, he's y 'all.
12:56: Y 'all. Y 'all have to respond to me. We just we just need to start doing these ping pong videos, man. I mean, we need to have response number 38.
13:03: Not doing it, Dr. Buzzard. Said my piece. Put it out there.
13:10: It's clear, you know, God's people hear it. You're you're your follower is going to find, you know, we've been there, done that, got the
13:17: T -shirt. These folks, they're just there's they've got to have the final word. That's all they do.
13:25: And that's what I was saying. When you've got something coming up like this, this is when these types of folks show up who have their one string banjos, their one string banjos.
13:33: What else is he doing? Is he defending the veracity of the text of the
13:38: New Testament? Is he? No, he's got one thing. He's pushing his one little teeny tiny view.
13:43: And the one is Pentecostals are coming out. They're doing their thing. And they all just want their few seconds of of fame,
13:50: I guess. Well, hey, you know what? YouTube's big place. Post all you want. I don't care. I just simply have to trust that people see now third one.
13:58: Will you respond? You must respond to me. Give me my time. I do.
14:05: We did an entire debate. You lost, man. Big time. It's a third post in two minutes.
14:11: I know you lost big time. Get over it. Your position is indefensible. OK, we showed that.
14:17: Get over it. You know, sometimes people wonder, well, why don't you respond? Because this is what happens.
14:25: You even acknowledge their existence like, well, I'll tell you what. You may have refuted me then, but you can't refute me now.
14:32: I need to get a clip of that famous Glenn Close audio from that movie where she goes,
14:41: I will not be ignored. I don't know if I want to do that.
14:48: No, I don't think we're going to. No, no, no. Not going down that road. Oh, come on, man. Put it out there.
14:55: Make your argument. Quote your liberal scholars. Do your thing. I don't care. You've been refuted.
15:03: You know, keep, you know, just keep cranking out. How many times do you have to repeat the same refutation?
15:10: It's just that's just how it is for so many people anyways. Again, it's deep seat in the saddle because here's here's
15:20: William Schnabel, and obviously I do not know, because like I said, I just ran into this.
15:27: If I had known something like this in 1997, I'm sure I would have made some mention of when
15:32: I wrote that article. But I don't even know how to.
15:39: Before you play this, my recollection. I recall that era very well. And my recollection of our discussions at the time is we have this
15:46: Mormon who's into King James only as a former Mormon. At the time, I thought he was. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was a former
15:51: Mormon. All right. Now, that was the only reason anybody had ever heard him was he was a he's a former Mormon.
15:57: And so he was writing. He wrote a book with Jim Spencer on something about the secrets of the temple or something like that.
16:04: And he was doing the circuit type thing. And you'll notice my article is on his arguments, not about him or anything like that, you know, it's just like, you know,
16:13: I'm sorry you're getting into this stuff and that kind of thing. But if I had known he was making claims like this, which
16:20: I don't think he was at this time, but I could be wrong, I could be wrong, but get a deep seat in the saddle.
16:27: So, Mrs. David Hewitt grabs the cushion, so she's getting ready.
16:34: Okay, like I said, I can't even play all this. I'm gonna play about half of it. Here we go. It will start.
16:43: How and why did you become a vampire? A very good question. A lot of people ask me that.
16:49: How and why did you become a vampire? And he says, that's a very good question.
16:55: A lot of people ask me that. Yeah, I bet that's real interesting in restaurants.
17:01: Hey, dude, exactly why did you become a vampire? Well, see, again,
17:09: I was on this path of Satanism. And at one point, in order to proceed, you have to cross the abyss, as it's called.
17:17: And then at that point, you make a choice. And there may be different choices in different parts of the world.
17:23: But where I was, I was told I would have to be either become a werewolf or become a vampire.
17:29: And I knew a couple of people that were shapeshifters, that were were people, you know.
17:34: And they said, you know, well, it's real painful. And I thought, well, I'm not really into pain, you know. And the whole vampire thing sounded kind of sexy and erotic and whatever.
17:43: So I thought, well, okay, we'll do it that way. Because it was like a choice. It's either this or that, or else you just sit there on your hands and don't grow anymore as a great black magician.
17:54: So that was why I did it. Thank you. For how long were you a vampire? Well, I think it was probably at least two years, somewhere in there.
18:05: And, but on the other hand, I, you know, I could very easily survive by drinking the blood of some of the people in our covens.
18:14: And then also by, you know, I was celebrating Catholic Mass every day and consuming that, and that seemed to hold me.
18:21: Okay, now you say your teeth grew canines. Can you explain that whole process?
18:27: I mean, right now your teeth are hidden. All right.
18:35: I had to stop there because he starts going into how your teeth grow, like the human sexual response.
18:41: And I'm just like, what was it like to be the poor lady doing the interview here is what
18:49: I wonder. But how do you even respond to something like this?
18:56: I could survive by, well, I didn't want to become a shapeshifter because I was told that was really painful.
19:03: So I could survive by drinking the blood of the people in my coven. And, did you catch, by celebrating the
19:13: Mass, and that would hold him over? So, oh, you believe transubstantiation really happens?
19:21: Really? Wow. Okay. Wow. So this is what
19:29: Bill Schnebel, so here, you say, well, why are you mentioning this? Well, first of all, the things you find on YouTube, you know,
19:37: I think there are people who live their lives just cruising YouTube and finding stuff like this. That's really weird.
19:45: And the whole reason I'm concerned about this is I don't know if I want to even waste my time taking on Chris Pinto if he's into promoting lunacy like this.
19:58: I mean, I really don't. I mean, my thinking is to deal with the historical information.
20:04: And then, of course, obviously for me, the real issue is the textual interrelationship of Codex Sinaiticus with the papyri and later text types.
20:16: That's a scholarly thing. If you're putting out documentaries quoting people like this, you ain't going to care about that. And, you know, it's sort of like debating
20:25: Gail Ripplinger. When you catch Gail Ripplinger in a factual error, all she has to do is say, well, that's what
20:32: God says. Well, how do you recruit that? You know, when you're talking with someone, these folks get into all these conspiracy theories and stuff.
20:40: There's just no rational way of concluding the topic.
20:48: And so I'm honestly a little concerned at this point.
20:54: I haven't started the real effort of digging into the specifics of the of the accusations as Pinto places them anyways.
21:09: But if it's really based because honestly, I've been thinking about it. If Sinaiticus is a fraud, then there has to be all sorts of other manuscripts that are too.
21:18: And do you eventually just get to the point of saying, well, anything disagrees the TR is a satanic fraud?
21:25: Well, that's one way of doing textual criticism, I guess. You know, just everything out there is bad.
21:33: But there's no way of of actually responding to that, of actually refuting that.
21:39: So I don't know. I am I am concerned about that. But I did I did find it fascinating in the article on the
21:49: SolaSisters .com. But even more disturbing than the sensationalistic aspect of Schnabelin's vampire claims is the fact that Schnabelin is also unabashedly a
22:01: King James onlyist, claiming that when he cast demons out of people, no other
22:07: Bible translation reaches them besides the KJV. I wonder how
22:13: Paul pulls it off. Well, if it was good enough for Paul. He embraces the Hebrew roots movement.
22:20: OK, that's a real issue. And holds just as notice noted to false spiritual warfare deliverance teachings.
22:30: And then then there's some quotes here. Wearing a tallit, a prayer shawl, can provide additional spiritual covering while in prayer.
22:44: If you are able to procure one and blow notes on it, a shofar is another powerful tool from Israel.
22:51: There is so much more that can be said about the shofar as a spiritual warfare tool. But space does not permit here.
22:57: If you have a shofar, I would recommend blowing it prayerfully every day during the days of Tisha B 'Av.
23:07: Another stronghold shattering prayer that can be used is to recite the Shema out loud in the morning and night before you go to bed.
23:15: Proclaiming it in English is good, but doing it in the actual language of the Torah, Hebrew, is better. Hmm, sort of sounds like my
23:21: Muslim friends with Arabic. Even if you just proclaim the two main verses, this is powerful. Here is how to say it phonetically in Hebrew.
23:28: And then he goes through how to say it prophetically in Hebrew. When the Feast of Trumpets begins, if you have a shofar, blow it.
23:36: If you do not have one or find it hard to get a proper note out of it, you can easily find sound or video files on places like YouTube that can provide you with a digital shofar note.
23:47: It is better than nothing. The shofar sound will help crack through the shells of our own self -deception so we can really enter these prophetic times ready to do business with Yahuwah.
24:02: Forsaking all else, including all our sins, to only follow Him and His words.
24:10: Okay, so we've got a King James -only -est Hebrew roots movement, former vampire,
24:19: Satanist, and Mormon. There you go.
24:25: There you go. Well, okay, that's very, very interesting.
24:35: I don't know, to me it's somewhat depressing that this type of thing is going on when there is so much really happening.
24:44: The moral revolution, the immoral revolution that is going on at such an amazing speed that I'm hearing a lot more people who haven't been influenced by me,
24:58: I'm a nobody, but finally saying what I've been saying for a long time. The only way to look at what's happening in our nation and to make heads or tails out of it biblically is
25:06: God's judgment. That's God's judgment right there. Now, of course, I'm not sure that my Arminian friends really have a biblical, anthropological basis for making that statement, making that kind of argument.
25:21: I really don't know what they do. But anyway, there you go.
25:29: I just had that queued up and I'm like, well, that is really weird. That is really, really, really weird.
25:35: All right. With that, I'm going to go back to our audio files and pick back up.
25:41: I couldn't find the quote. I will play it and we'll deal with it a little bit later on.
25:49: But Yusuf Ismail was kind enough to direct me to a debate presentation he did.
25:59: And Yusuf likes long opening statements. My original debates had really long opening statements.
26:05: And I certainly do enjoy getting to actually develop a point. The only thing
26:12: I'm concerned about is if you have really long opening statements, you can never really end up having a lot of interaction because most of the debate is taken up just with that.
26:24: And it sometimes allows for a really, really wide variety of topics to be presented and you never really get overly in depth in any single one of them.
26:33: But anyway, it was about a 40 or 50 minute, I think it was about 50 minute presentation on why he's a
26:41: Muslim and not anything else. And I found it interesting. I mean, it was rather surface level in the sense that, you know, he would deal with entire religions in 35 seconds, which, you know, all you can do is just pick out a main thing and sort of summarize it from there.
26:56: But he spent much more time on Christianity. And one of the things that just amazes me, and I'm going to go ahead and mention this now.
27:02: If we get around to playing it, I'll probably end up mentioning it again, but it seems to be so ubiquitous, so ubiquitous amongst
27:09: Muslims. They will say Islam has always meant to be and was always meant to be a world religion.
27:25: Whereas Christianity was not meant, it was only meant, well, who was it meant for?
27:32: This is what's sort of weird about it. And what they do is they just present a simplistic, obvious misreading of the text of the
27:43: New Testament. They will quote Jesus' specific statements to disciples concerning their ministry during Jesus' lifetime.
27:55: Don't go outside the borders of Israel. Don't go to anyone but the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And then ignoring that the very same author, whether it's
28:05: Matthew's account or Luke's account or Mark's account or whatever, ignoring the fact that that very same author is going to make it very, very clear that the gospel is meant to go to all the ends of the earth, quoting prophecies about bringing in the
28:20: Gentiles and all the rest of that kind of stuff, ignoring all that, they'll actually try to make it sound like, well, if you read the
28:30: New Testament, Jesus made it very clear his faith is only supposed to be with the
28:35: Jews. So anything after that is allegedly irrelevant.
28:41: And I'm like, wait a minute. You would never allow us to get away with such selective cherry -picking of the text of the
28:50: Koran. And rightfully so.
28:56: It would be offensive to so badly handle the text of the
29:01: Koran in that way. Your response would be, what, you didn't finish reading that surah? You haven't read this surah over there?
29:11: And so whenever I hear my Muslim friends quoting, well, you know, Jesus said don't go to anyone, I'm like, finish reading the book for crying out loud.
29:19: Just that one book. You know, go a couple chapters later on. Go ye into all the world.
29:28: And if you know those texts very well at all, you know that Matthew, for example, is always throwing these little things in.
29:38: Luke's doing the same thing. Where you see that even in the ministry of Jesus, he's talking, you know, he's commending the faith of Gentiles.
29:46: And he's, you know, and John, he's talking about sheep that are not of this fold. And you've got all this stuff where very obviously, painfully obviously, the intention of the writers is not to be interpreted the way you are interpreting him.
30:04: So why do you interpret him that way? Because you're not concerned about what he actually meant. You're only concerned about how you can use those words in light of your understanding of Muhammad's teachings.
30:16: That's what you're doing. And that's wrong.
30:22: That is not how you handle other texts. For example, someone sent me some very good information since the last program about some of the people that are quoted against the comments that I made out of 1
30:40: Corinthians chapter 8. And you can find liberal scholars anywhere that believe anything to dispute any point.
30:51: Folks, look, again, I am concerned when
30:56: I hear people in our audience, in our chat channel, in Twitter, on Facebook—well, I don't really read
31:02: Facebook very often, but once in a while I wander in there— who you encounter somebody with a couple letters after their name who says something differently than what
31:14: I've said or your pastor has said. And it's like, well, how do
31:19: I respond to that? What you've got to do is get a foundation so you can analyze what is being said.
31:28: You have to learn to demythologize scholarship. I don't care what statement
31:34: I could make about the Christian faith, you'll be able to find someone with a Ph .D.
31:40: to say I'm wrong. That's easy. That's easy.
31:46: It doesn't matter. There are Ph .D .s that deny the resurrection. There are Ph .D .s that deny inspiration. There are Ph .D .s that deny the existence of—
31:52: You can find—miraculous—you can find a quote -unquote scholar to say anything.
32:00: You must demythologize scholarship. Just because you have a bunch of degrees after your name doesn't mean you haven't even so much as good common sense.
32:08: In fact, many times these days it might mean just the opposite. You have got to learn to demythologize scholarship.
32:18: So, for example, to get published today in many places, you have to come up with something that's new.
32:30: Amongst Christians, what that means is you have to come up with something that's heretical. And so many approach the text of the
32:39: New Testament today with a chainsaw. That's their methodology of exegesis.
32:48: And that's why so much of what's written today sounds so different than what was written in the past.
32:55: Because instead of treating the text with respect, you just chop it up into whatever shape you want to fit into your particular puzzle.
33:07: So you come up with your idea. You know, we were talking about that new movie last week.
33:12: And evidently, I forgot to bring it up, but here's another example. The producer of that movie, someone posted the
33:21: Dividing Line audio on their blog about it. He's cruising the net looking for any mention of his movie.
33:30: And he wants to come on, and he wants to debate, and he wants, who are your five favorite Pauline scholars, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
33:37: You know, same old thing. Give me my time. Give me my time. You've got a webcast.
33:44: Obviously, you've got a worldwide audience there. So you give me my time. You know, if you ain't, then you're a chicken. It's sort of like, you chicken,
33:50: McFly? You know, something like that. That used to bother me.
33:56: But all I've got to do is point to a certain list of about 130 moderated debates I've done with about everybody on the planet and go, don't even go there.
34:05: You're destroying any credibility you've got to even try the chicken thing. Give me a break.
34:14: Anyway, what these folks do is they come at the text, and they just chop it up into pieces.
34:21: They have no interest in honesty, fairness. They're approaching it from a naturalistic perspective.
34:28: They don't care about understanding it from the perspective of the actual author. All the rest is, that's the easy way of doing it, is just chop the text up, fit it into whatever size puzzle you've got.
34:38: All right? And so, when I come to a text, like 1
34:44: Corinthians 8, there are certain constrictions that make my task much harder.
34:54: If I've got a certain theory I want to promote, and this is all part of my talking about Yusuf Ismail's comments that, well, you know,
35:01: Christianity even says it's not worldwide. No, Christianity says it's worldwide. It says it directly. Every author says it.
35:07: How do you get that from the text? Well, you get that from approaching the text in a substantially improper way.
35:14: And that is, well, I'm going to cut this out. I'm going to cut that little verse out. I'm going to stick that in my Muslim puzzle, and now it fits.
35:22: And all that other stuff about worldwide and going to the ends of the earth and every creature, I just get to ignore that.
35:29: I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to put these things together, you see. That's a whole lot easier.
35:34: And in the discussion of the Shema in 1
35:40: Corinthians 8 -6, for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and we for Him, and one
35:50: Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things, and we through Him. When I look at that, there are certain constrictions upon where I can go in my interpretation of that text.
36:02: And it's because, you see, I want to interpret that text in light of what its original author intended for his readers to understand.
36:12: And the vast majority of people writing today, that is irrelevant. That is irrelevant.
36:20: They don't care. They've got a theory. They have certain presuppositions.
36:26: This cannot be inspired. I don't have to be consistent with it. I don't even have to interpret the same letter consistent with itself because these are just human authors, and this
36:36: Paul guy was an idiot. I mean, let's just be honest. What most people are saying today, what a lot of the alleged cutting -edge scholars, is that Paul was a deceitful, scheming, power -hungry, nasty man.
36:53: Anti -Paulanism is all the rage today. Accuse him of anything under the sun.
37:01: If you're Bishop Spong, say he was a repressed homosexual. If you're a Muslim, say he made up a whole new religion and got rid of all the real disciples of Jesus, who
37:08: I guess were a bunch of wimps. Just blast
37:14: Paul for everything and anything. It's fair game these days.
37:19: Has been for a long time. I mean, German critical scholarships have been doing that for a long, long time. Just chop him up, and don't try to make 1
37:31: Corinthians 8 -6 fit or harmonize with the Carmen Christi and Philippians 2.
37:40: Yeah, sure, there's all sorts of evidence that the Apostle Paul viewed
37:46: Jesus as Yahweh in the flesh, just like John did, just like Peter did. But you see, as soon as you say that, then— well, of course, we know
37:57: John's later, and Peter didn't write what is attributed to him in 1 Peter. So you just chop it up.
38:04: Don't like that? And when you come to Paul, maybe you can do the let's cut
38:11: Paul down to only seven letters routine. And, well, he uses terminology over here that's different than what he uses over there.
38:17: I haven't heard quite as many Muslims glomming on to that. Is glomming a good word?
38:24: I think it's a good word, given how many words are entering into our language that aren't good words.
38:30: I think glomming's pretty good. Glomming on to—I haven't found too many Muslims that have glommed on to that, but I don't think it's because they're trying to be consistent.
38:39: I don't think it's because they're trying to become consistent. Why? Well, because if you were to apply the primary argumentation that they use to say, for example, the pastorals are not
38:58: Pauline. What are the two primary arguments that are used? And I want to see what is out there, outside of good commentaries, outside of Kistamacher and stuff like that.
39:13: I want to see what's out there on a defense of the Pauline authorship of the pastorals. I want to do more reading in it, and if there's not much out there,
39:21: I may need to do something about that. But anyway, the two primary arguments used against the
39:31: Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles are, A, the topic or topics of an established church could not have been relevant during the days of Paul.
39:45: This points us to a later period in church history. Now, how do any of them know that?
39:50: It is a theory. It is a reconstruction of what they think the early church would be like that's based upon the presupposition that no one was really thinking about starting a church in the first place.
40:06: So if somebody was, the entire presupposition is irrelevant. If it actually was the wisdom of the
40:13: Holy Spirit to establish a church with elders and deacons that had a certain form of worship, then the entire presupposition is washed away.
40:20: But you can't accept that. That's a given. You can't start there.
40:26: You have to start with the presupposition that it was never God's intention to actually found the Christian church.
40:33: And yet, very many people in seminaries founded by people who actually believe that God did are being taught that, well, actually,
40:41: God didn't. Now, they may not be told that directly, but when they are taught these things that have, as their presuppositions, these foundational thoughts, they eventually get around to it and go, hmm,
40:56: I guess I really can't believe that God intended to build a church because, and then they're reasoning at it backwards. So that's the first thing.
41:06: The subject material being discussed, elders, deacons, caring for, as soon as I say this,
41:16: I have to start chuckling, because, caring for the widows. Yeah, didn't that come up in, like,
41:23: Acts? Very early on. First few chapters. Yeah, it did, didn't it?
41:30: I'm a brat. So much for those theories. But you've got these presuppositions.
41:35: There's the first one. The second one, of course, are the vocabulary studies. You study the relative utilization of such terms in what you consider, and see, you get to determine this.
41:53: That's the fun part of source criticism and form criticism and stuff. It's like Plato.
41:59: You get to determine, well, what's, what are the original Pauline letters?
42:06: What are the original Pauline letters? And by you getting to determine what they are, then you determine what the
42:12: Pauline vocabulary is, and then you can compare that to anything, and say, see, it's different. So that can't be Paul. Now, I've often pointed out, because Bart Ehrman's big on this one, and his book
42:23: Forge, and stuff like that. I would love, I haven't gotten it yet, but this would be fun to do.
42:33: Maybe somebody out there who's really good with computers could do this. But do a vocabulary comparison between Bart Ehrman's popular books, like Misquoting Jesus, and his scholarly books.
42:50: And on that basis, demonstrate he didn't write them. And you get to choose which one is the actual, original
42:57: Ehrman. And so, because, obviously, when you write a popular book, you get to use different vocabulary than you do when you're writing.
43:08: For example, there is a collection of Ehrman's scholarly articles published by Brill.
43:14: It's about 159 bucks, or something like that. If you took that material, made it the standard for Ehrman, you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt he did not write any of his most popular books.
43:27: Any of them. Couldn't do it. Why? Because the vocabulary is different, you see.
43:33: But that's the argument that's used against the pastorals. And I just simply point out, excuse me, the pastorals are personal letters.
43:39: If you compare the vocabulary used in my personal letters, my emails, written to my wife, my daughter, my son, friends, you know, a couple guys and I are writing
43:53: Alternative Tucson together. And we're going to do it as a group. And, you know, we want to get really, really, you know, see what the best time we could possibly pull as a group would be.
44:03: And so we're writing back and forth, and we're talking about equipment, and jerseys, and rest stops, and climbing altitudes.
44:12: If you compare that with what I put on the blog, obviously,
44:19: I could not have written both of them, right? You could do that with your tweets. Oh, sure. The writing tweets versus the theological tweets?
44:27: Well, not only that, but now you've got a real limitation as to size. So, yeah,
44:33: I normally, in real writing, do not use the word for, the letter for, for the word for. Interesting concept there.
44:40: Anyway, Paul's writing to intimate friends about subjects he's not addressing in Romans or anything else.
44:48: And it's interesting, if you take Romans out of the allegedly genuine
44:58: Pauline epistles and then compare it on that, it fails. Pull any of them out by themselves, they're going to fail. So it's a, it is an absolutely rigged deck, no matter which direction you go with it.
45:10: But most people look at it, and they hear somebody saying, oh, Paul never used that phrase anywhere else.
45:16: Oh, I don't know, maybe the... Now, it's not that there hasn't been good responses.
45:23: I'm seeing some of our more scholarly men in the channel. Johnny Redeemed and Farshad and others in the channel talking about some of the better commentaries.
45:35: George Knight, the third's commentary on the pastoral is really one of the best out there.
45:41: I got to meet Dr. Knight. I was so thankful I got to meet him a couple years ago, because my fellow elder had studied under him.
45:47: My, I have wandered a long ways, haven't I? Let me get back to the subject here. The point is that many of the quote -unquote scholars out there,
45:59: I was talking about demythologizing scholarship, all they're doing is repeating what they've been taught.
46:08: All they do, that's all they're doing. They're just repeating what they've been taught. They've never checked these things out.
46:14: And when it comes to conservative versus liberal issues, folks, I've been there,
46:20: I've done that, I've got the t -shirt, I know about what I'm speaking here. Liberals do not care to know what we believe.
46:32: They don't read our materials. I have debated numerous liberal scholars.
46:40: They did not take a moment to even find out who I was. They didn't care.
46:46: Read anything by a conservative? No need to do that. And you all know, when
46:55: I go into a debate, if it is possible, when I went into a debate with John Dominick Crossan, he was amazed at my knowledge of his own writings.
47:05: And he was honored by that. Same thing with James Price. He was absolutely amazed at how much time
47:15: I had spent listening to him, reading him, understanding his position. We take the time to read the liberals, the liberals do not take the time to read us.
47:23: So you can't look at them and say, well, the majority of scholars say. The majority of scholars have never even thought about it.
47:30: They don't even know what the other side is. That's what I mean about demythologizing scholarship.
47:40: There is now something in yellow on the screen. If Doc ever says bubble squeak on the dividing line,
47:49: I will give money to Doc's favorite charity. We are both of my favorite charity.
47:56: That's exactly right. We do actually have somebody in channel. Yes, bubble squeak.
48:03: I look forward to the day the Doc says bubble squeak on the DL. Well, you are allowed to choose your nick.
48:10: And we have someone in channel named Pinkster, who is a guy. Okay, so some people pick nicks that are just completely inappropriate or sound really funny when you say them on the air, including bubble squeak.
48:26: So, I wouldn't have seen that if it hadn't been put in color, though, because I am sort of busy here.
48:32: Anyway, my whole point, again, folks, I'm sorry to have wandered so far. You have to demythologize scholarship.
48:44: The media in our land loves to say, well, scholars say, well, scholars say, that is an absolutely empty phrase.
48:56: It's empty. It means nothing. Absolutely nothing.
49:03: Because scholars say everything. You can find people with degrees who will say anything and everything.
49:11: It's irrelevant. The only time what a scholar has to say is relevant is if that scholar happens to have serious evidence in their writing and in their teaching of actually having studied the area where they're making pronouncements.
49:27: But today, people like Richard Dawkins, who is a biologist, is allowed to pontificate on anything, even to the point of making the most egregious and inane errors in regards to history and theology, but because he has a degree, somehow that makes him a genius in everything.
49:53: You have to, have to, have to demythologize scholarship and recognize that much of what you hear under the name of quote -unquote scholarship is nothing more than personal opinion based upon false presuppositions by people who have never been challenged on a presuppositional level.
50:12: They've never been challenged. Certainly not in the educational system we have today. Where, where are people presuppositionally challenged to consider their naturalistic worldview in public education today?
50:25: Nowhere. Nowhere. At all.
50:33: So, demythologize it, folks. Look, some of the most consistent, thinking, brilliant people
50:43: I've ever read or talked to had no degrees behind their name. And these days, given the corruption of the educational system, maybe that's a good thing.
50:56: Maybe that's a good thing. Now, I'm not trying to say if you're in school, there's something wrong with your doing that.
51:01: I've certainly done enough of it myself. And I love teaching. And, yeah, there's all sorts of benefit in knowing the original languages, knowing them well, not just the, you know,
51:15: I'm dependent upon Logos, click, click, look what I can do type of thing, but actually be able to read the language. Those things are wonderful.
51:21: It's good to know history. Yes, it's good to do lots of reading and all the rest of that stuff.
51:28: But these days, with the mind games being played in so much of what is called academia today, demythologize that scholarship.
51:40: Do not bow your head before the brilliance of a world that refuses to even so much as acknowledge its own creator.
51:53: The Scripture describes as foolish the man who does not know his own God. That sermon, don't know where it came from.
52:02: But I will just simply mention, getting back to Yusuf Ismail, that misuse of that text.
52:12: See, Christianity is not meant for the world. Any fair reading of the New Testament says the exact opposite.
52:19: Says the exact opposite. That's not a fair reading to say, well,
52:26: Jesus said, don't go. That's not all he said. That was a particular point in time, and after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he said something differently, and he indicated that even before the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
52:37: And everything else in the New Testament says the same thing. So it would be like me taking one little statement about something relevant to something about doing something with the
52:49: Jews in Medina and saying, well, see, that has to be eternal for Islam.
52:57: Even though all these other ayahs and all these other surahs say something different, I demand this be done.
53:03: Come on. You never let us do that with the Quran. Don't do it with the Bible. Don't do it with the
53:09: Bible. And I know you're listening, not just Yusuf, but all my Muslim friends, because if I say anything, boy,
53:16: I'll tell you. Videos pop up on YouTube, and it's amazing, the audience. Again, could you update me?
53:24: How much have we spent on advertising again for the program? Where are we now? Let me add that up real quick.
53:30: Nothing. Okay, thank you. That's where we were last time. I even had the guys at Reformation Montana drop me a note, said, hey, we've got some space in our publication if you want to promote the ministry.
53:44: I totally forgot about it until after it was too late, and I just wrote back and said, dude, we just don't advertise. It's almost like we're allergic to it.
53:50: We shouldn't be, but it's just sort of the way it is. So, anyhow,
53:57: I need to get back to this, or I'm never getting anything done. As it is, I've done enough preaching for the day.
54:02: I apologize for that. I guess just all these people coming out and just spitting at me.
54:08: You need to respond to this. I even had another one. I guess that has been coming from everywhere.
54:17: Jews for Judaism Canada. Let me see if I can find this. Jews for Judaism Canada sent me something.
54:31: Jeff Robinson. No, that's not it. Boy, have
54:37: I gotten all these emails? Anyways, eventually, I looked it up, and it was
54:44: Jews for Judaism Canada gave a link and basically said, watch these videos if you dare.
54:53: And I'm sort of just like, if I dare? What on earth are you talking about?
55:00: It's just like people coming out going, try doing this, try doing that, look at my stuff, make mention of me, and so on and so forth.
55:09: And it's like, oh, please. Anyhow, I couldn't find it, but it was the
55:15: Jews for Judaism Canada. That's sort of interesting.
55:22: Alright, let's get back to where we were in Yusuf Ismail's opening statement in his debate with David Seacombe on the
55:30: New Testament. Oh! Turn it down. Thank you.
55:36: We have real high tech. Someday, a splitter would be nice. That's something we've got to think about, because that would be easy.
55:45: Those are cheap. Let's get a splitter so that I can play from either computer and not have to plug and unplug and make silly sounds and stuff like that.
55:57: I bet we've got a splitter in the other room. We could probably do that really easily. Let's see if we can do that.
56:02: That would be a good idea. Now, what's funny is, that sounds like my multifocality argument.
56:21: Multiple authors writing it multiple times to multiple audiences. Now, many
56:27: Muslims ignorant of the history of how the New Testament came together seem to think that that's a bad thing, because they make their book the standard.
56:38: We've got one author writing just one book, and that's better than you having multiple authors writing multiple books.
56:46: Well, which one can give you the better opportunity of demonstrating consistency over multiple people? I obviously think that the incredible harmony of the multicolored threads of divine truth that are woven through the fabric of the
57:04: New Testament as a whole is far higher, far higher in evidence of its inspiration than anything you can come up with that Muslims have presented like, well, it's the beauty of the
57:17: Quran. That's supposed to be the greatest evidence. The beauty of the Quran. Okay, well, there are portions of the
57:27: Quran that are uplifting, you know, the monotheistic parts, you know, God's the creator of all things, and, you know, where Allah mocks the unbelievers and things like that.
57:37: Yeah, it's pretty good, but we've got that in the Bible. That's Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, some of the
57:43: Psalms. But I've never found anything in the Quran like the Carmen Christi.
57:49: Nothing. Nothing even close. But, of course, that's just a subjective opinion of yours truly.
57:58: I would never present that as, here's the evidence. You all need to leave. You all need to leave Islam. Because I think that the
58:07: Carmen Christi is more beautiful than anything you have in the Quran. In the original
58:13: Greek, of course. Because it has to be the original Arabic, so, the original Greek. Is that really an argument?
58:20: No, it's not really an argument. But anyways, it sounds a little bit like my multifocality argument. And it's vitally important.
58:27: Because since you do have multiple authors writing to differing audiences at different times, then the New Testament is never under any one person's control, so that major editing and change can be inserted into it.
58:41: That's important. That's really, really, really important to consider. Okay?
59:02: Now, already, just with that list, are any of those from the time of the
59:15: Apostles? The answer is no. Everybody recognizes the Apostles' Creed is later.
59:22: Paul and Thecla, much later. Protevangelium of James, middle of the second century.
59:30: Gnostic writing. Silly Gnostic writing. Silly Gnostic writing, absolutely necessary to the development of Mariology within Romanism, but still silly
59:38: Gnostic writing. None of which have any... They're not lost books of the Bible.
59:44: That is a misnomer, obviously. That would be like collecting together other writings in Arabic from around the time of the writing of the
59:52: Quran and saying, the lost books of the Quran. A Muslim would be right to say, why do you call that a lost book?
01:00:00: It sounds like you're saying it should have been in there. What's the basis upon saying any of these should have been in the
01:00:06: New Testament? We are never told. We're never told. We're going to take a brief break.
01:00:12: We've got half an hour left to go on the program today. We're going to press on. Thanks for listening. We'll be right back. Answering those who claim that only the
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01:03:13: Anyway, we've got a wide variety of people in the audience, thankfully most of whom enjoy what we're doing.
01:03:22: And then you've got the what is it like to be a Muslim who listens? What's it like to be Muslim by choice?
01:03:27: Or some of these guys that have to listen to all this other stuff. Must be a real bummer.
01:03:32: They must put on high speed. They just have to. It's sort of sad to hear all that stuff and then still...
01:03:39: But anyway, another another issue to get to another point. Let's get back to Yusuf Ismail's opening statement.
01:03:47: And it goes on and goes on. The Shepherd of Hermas, which somehow or the other never found itself in the existing
01:03:55: New Testament, even though most recently it's existing in the Codex Sinaiticus. We'll come to that later.
01:04:01: Okay, Shepherd of Hermas is very popular. But what is the foundation saying that if it is in a
01:04:08: Codex that means it's canonical? I mean, there's a presupposition there. Have you proven the presupposition? Are you aware of any other manuscripts or any other practices where you would have, because you're producing a major -size
01:04:24: Codex, a mixed Codex where you have other books that are not necessarily considered to be canonical.
01:04:33: There were people, especially around Rome, that believed the Shepherd of Hermas was canonical. There were. There were lots of people who didn't think that the
01:04:41: Book of Revelation was. Once again, folks, what's the best way for you as Christians to be prepared for the widest variety of attacks and denials of your faith?
01:04:59: Is it by falling into the trap that I certainly, as a young person, probably fell into, because I didn't really have much in the way of guidance when
01:05:08: I first started studying Mormonism as a 19 -year -old young man.
01:05:15: I was 19 years old when I first walked into that, well, when I first met those two more missionaries in my sister -in -law's home and started going to the
01:05:23: LDS bookstore. I was all of 19 years old. Nobody at my school had ever mentioned the term apologetics to me.
01:05:31: I didn't know what it meant. I'd never met someone who was an apologist. I had heard of people who did apologetics.
01:05:39: I just hadn't heard that particular phrase. I knew people who defended the faith. Josh McDowell was well -known.
01:05:47: I didn't really have any guidance. When I first started studying Mormonism, I was really concerned, because there's just so much to remember.
01:05:59: A lot of people have the idea, well, you just have to know everything there is to know about every religious group. That's the only way you're ever going to be able to do apologetics, and so since I'll never be able to do that, then
01:06:05: I'm not going to do apologetics. I'm not going to speak up. That's not how you do it. First and foremost, first and foremost, you learn the truth about your faith from the foundations up, and then you make application to specific groups.
01:06:28: Now, it's obviously extremely helpful to be able to quote the Quran and talking to Muslims, but in answering most
01:06:35: Muslim objections to the Bible, you wouldn't have to necessarily be a student of the Quran. So, for example, what was just said concerning the
01:06:46: Shepherd of Hermas. You need to know what that was. In fact, it doesn't take long to read, and most people who read it go, well, that's obviously sub -biblical.
01:06:57: I mean, it's clearly not consistent with the rest of the New Testament canon, so, I mean, what's the big deal?
01:07:03: But the important thing is, the more you know about church history, the more you know about the backgrounds of the faith, the fewer weapons the enemies of your faith will have to use against you.
01:07:21: The vast majority of the weapons used that are the most effective are ignorance on the part of Christians.
01:07:29: I remember this one guy. He was a former Mormon, interestingly enough, and he left the
01:07:37: Mormon church and was immediately, and this is where there's real wisdom in listening to the
01:07:44: Bible, he was immediately pushed off into doing anti -Mormon ministry.
01:07:51: If you're a former Mormon and you need to be going out and going to churches and giving your testimony, I've said over and over again, if you've come out of a cultic system, a false religious system, the last thing you need to be doing is going out and lecturing on that.
01:08:05: You need to be grounded in the faith.
01:08:11: You need to grow. You are a babe. And so this guy isn't given the proper discipleship, isn't, and all of a sudden a fairly short period of time later he is blown away by atheistic material that says, we don't even know who wrote some of the books in the
01:08:42: Bible. And he's just, he's completely rattled by that. Becomes an agnostic, leaves, just completely abandons all religious faith in total.
01:08:55: Now there was nothing in this material that was even semi -cogent. It was just, it was really bad.
01:09:02: Really bad material. It was pain stuff, by the way.
01:09:07: You know, age of reason, that kind of stuff. Really bad stuff. But what made it effective was the fact that he didn't know.
01:09:17: He didn't know. So, you know, my Muslim friends are always going, well you don't know who wrote
01:09:26: Hebrews. Well no, we don't. Got some great theories, could be talking about some of them in the future.
01:09:33: But no, we don't. So? Well, it can't be Scripture then. Why? Well, you have to know who wrote it.
01:09:40: Why? Well, because. Why? See, they've made an assumption.
01:09:47: It's their assumption. Well, because you have to have an isnot chain. Show me someone in the New Testament that thought that.
01:09:53: Show me that Jesus said you needed to do that. Show me that any of the original disciples of Jesus thought that way.
01:09:59: Well, why? It's all presuppositions. Just keep digging down until you get down to the false assumption that's been made.
01:10:10: So, but the more you know. I mean, when someone mentions the
01:10:16: Shepherd and Hermes to me, really, have you read it? Well, no.
01:10:24: Why not? Well, did you know that there were
01:10:30: Christians who thought of Scripture? Sure. So what? Well, that means that no one could.
01:10:38: Now, if they know their own history, they've got to stop there because they know there were canonical challenges even in the early days of Islam, though there couldn't be nearly as many because you only allegedly have one author and you've got a pretty small book.
01:10:52: But there were differences of opinion as to what was and what was not in the Quran. There were people, Ubay ibn Kab, Abdullah ibn
01:10:58: Masud. It's a fact. It can't really be disputed that there were differing opinions as to the numbers of the surahs and so on and so forth.
01:11:08: And somebody put it all together. So if they know their own history, then they know they're going to have to stop there because now they're engaging in gross inconsistency.
01:11:19: But the vast majority of them don't. They don't know the inconsistency. They don't even see it. You have got to provide them with that information.
01:11:26: So as it stands, at the outset, you had a whole host of different writings by different people, writing in different times and different contexts and influenced by the various idiosyncrasies and they never found themselves in the existing canon as we have it today.
01:11:38: Obviously, the most important observation there is none of them were first century. None of them even come close to the canonical
01:11:48: Gospels. They do not reflect Second Temple Judaism. They do not reflect this is what's so fascinating about the stuff
01:11:56: Peter Williams and other people who are popularizing some of the stuff that's come from Balcombe and stuff.
01:12:02: This is where some of those lectures I've recommended to you in the past are so important and so good because they talk about how the canonical
01:12:11: Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John use the exact language that was being used in Jerusalem in the first half of the first century in its normal usage.
01:12:25: In other words, the names because most people... What's fascinating is there so many people have the same name.
01:12:33: So there had to be a descriptor, an identifier to differentiate one
01:12:39: Mary from another because you'd yell out Mary and 40 % of the women on the street would turn around and look at you.
01:12:48: The very language I mean, the writers of the
01:12:53: Gospels know that area. They describe it properly. They use the right language as would be expected from that time.
01:13:01: As soon as you get to everything that Yusuf just quoted, any of these other alleged
01:13:07: Gospels, all that stuff falls away. Gone. Gone. Because you see, if you've not lived in a particular area, then you can't describe it very well, can you?
01:13:19: You can't say James from Metro Center unless you've lived in Phoenix.
01:13:27: Anybody who's lived in Phoenix would understand James of Metro Center, what that means.
01:13:33: That gives you a general area identifiable area from which James is from versus James from Mesa or James from around ASU or James from near South Mountain.
01:13:51: You see, I know the Phoenix area. Those make sense to me. But if someone were writing about stuff that happened in Phoenix that's never lived here, they either are not even going to bother with that or what's worse is, have you ever
01:14:07: I bet you have. Have you ever looked at the Bing and Google Maps and you zoom in on your area and there's all these names of neighborhoods
01:14:19: I've never even heard of. I've never even heard anyone even use that language.
01:14:25: Well, if someone used that language, it would probably be a good indication they actually don't live here.
01:14:32: They're looking at a map. And what you find from these other quote -unquote gospels is they come from a later time period, they're written in a different place, they don't use the language, they don't know the land, unlike Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
01:14:47: You cannot give me one example one example of any of these alleged gospels that are supposed to be in the
01:14:56: Bible by the way for a Muslim, where did Muhammad ever say any of those gospels were supposed to be in the Bible? He didn't even know what gospels were in the
01:15:03: Bible. He was ignorant of the Bible. Didn't know it, didn't know its contents. But you can't give me a one of them that can pass the test, not a one.
01:15:16: And this is why you need to be listening to this because folks, you're sending your kids if they end up going to State University they're going to run into people like Dr.
01:15:22: Carter like my daughter did, who's going to throw at them all this surface level garbage and they're going to be coming back and asking you you're their front line defense you're their front line defense.
01:15:37: For example and I might just probably amplify this later on, the Apostle Paul refers to an earlier writing that he had sent to the people in Corinth and he also alludes to an earlier writing that they had sent to him but you don't find that in the particular writings of Paul.
01:15:52: And why should we? There are multiple letters exchanged with the
01:15:58: Corinthians. Why would the church's letter to Paul be a part of the New Testament unless, again, what's the presupposition here?
01:16:05: You have to have it all. Do we have everything that Muhammad ever said?
01:16:11: Do we have anything that Muhammad ever did? Is even the Hadith an exhaustive account of everything?
01:16:18: Of course not. But I would never think about making that an argument. The presupposition is, well, there was stuff that was written, there were things the
01:16:27: Apostles did, well, you know what, the Apostle Paul's laundry list or his grocery list doesn't belong in the
01:16:33: New Testament. Just because he's an Apostle doesn't mean that everything he said or did is meant to be preserved by the
01:16:40: Spirit of God for the church. So, why even go there?
01:16:47: Because there's a false presupposition operating. In the New Testament you had the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scrolls in Egypt.
01:16:53: I haven't brought my copy along. Discovered in Egypt. You have other non -canonical writings which survived. The writings of the
01:16:58: Apostolic Fathers. And recent scholars. Again, yes, we have all those things.
01:17:04: Relevance is? We're not told. We're not told what the relevance is. Yep. Nag Hammadi, important stuff.
01:17:12: Oxyrhynchus, even more important, as far as textually speaking. The Oxyrhynchus papyri, extremely important for the establishment of the
01:17:20: New Testament. Great stuff. What does that have to do with the New Testament? Writings of Zero Church Fathers.
01:17:26: Okay. There were some folks who thought Clement was inspired. A few. It was generally, normally a small geographical area.
01:17:33: Probably close to where it was written, maybe. Or someone picked it up and, you know, preached a sermon or something,
01:17:38: I guess. Maybe it could become popular. But it never gained any type of universal traction or anything like that.
01:17:44: So, what's the point? I mean, we have a pausity of literature from around Mecca and Medina at this point in time.
01:17:57: At the concurrent point in time. I suppose that makes things easier. Or it might just say something about what was going on in Mecca and Medina at the time, that so little literature is actually being produced.
01:18:06: But if there was something produced, is that supposed to be part of the Quran? What would be the presupposition that would force you to think that?
01:18:15: Have to examine the presuppositions of these arguments. Generally, there's a consensus, and David can correct me if I'm wrong, that most of the scholarship in the biblical world today recognize the
01:18:26: New Testament, by and large, as apologetic pieces. In other words, specifically not necessarily historical, but more specifically emphasizing a particular theological point written in different parts of the ancient world.
01:18:43: If by that, I'm trying to put the most positive interpretation on this as I can, if by that you're saying that an apologetic work is not a historical work, or that a historical work cannot have apologetic interest, then obviously
01:19:00: I would disagree. The assumption that many would have is that if there is apologetic, it's automatically ahistorical.
01:19:08: Well, if that's the case, you better get rid of the Quran. Because there's a whole lot of apologetic.
01:19:15: I mean, good grief. How much of the Quran is condemning shirk, condemning polytheism?
01:19:21: How much of the Quran is defending the prophethood of Muhammad? If apologetic means it's ahistorical and therefore untrustworthy, then why are you carrying a
01:19:33: Quran around? Because it is part of the warp and woof, the very fabric of the
01:19:39: Quran for apologetic material to exist there. So, I guess it depends on what the application is being made here, as to how we respond to it.
01:19:50: So, if I want to establish a particular view, that means that I'm automatically dishonest.
01:20:00: Is that what's being said? It's very clear that Ibn Ishaq is wanting to establish a particular view, so therefore should we reject everything
01:20:11: Ibn Ishaq said about the life of Muhammad? If you do that, you're not going to have anything left of the life of Muhammad. Both Bukhari and Muslim were trying to establish a particular perspective, so we do not trust any of their work.
01:20:23: The writer of the Quran is clearly trying to establish a particular monotheistic perspective. So, the assumption is that if you're trying to establish a perspective, you're automatically going to be dishonest.
01:20:33: The Muslim already recognizes, in their own materials, that that is not a presupposition they can embrace.
01:20:38: It's certainly a presupposition of the vast majority of liberalism today. But if you do not embrace that in regards to Islam, then why do you embrace it in regards to Christianity?
01:20:49: Looking for the consistency. It's a negative judgment.
01:21:12: It's a positive development. Not to find fault with the Bible, but to actually understand it in its proper context. Might be.
01:21:19: Can be. Frequently isn't. Vast majority of form criticism and source criticism imports presuppositions opposed to those of the authors of the scriptures themselves, and begins with assumptions that, well, whatever the
01:21:37: Bible is, it can't be what Christians have thought it was. It can't be what Christians have thought it was.
01:21:45: The vast majority of that has been destructive. And the most meaningful distinction to be made in regards to criticism of the
01:21:52: Bible is between that which is theoretical and that which is fact -based.
01:21:58: In other words, between lower and higher criticism. Higher criticism is theoretical. There aren't really any rules.
01:22:06: A scholar comes along and says, well, I'm going to say that if this term is used, it reflects this group.
01:22:13: If this term is used, it reflects this group, and that term is used, it reflects that group, and therefore I'm going to cut the Old Testament up into these parts, and this is the priestly material, and this is the
01:22:25: Yahwist material over here, and this is the Deuteronomic material over here, all based upon my theory that they would use these particular terms.
01:22:34: There's nothing in history that they're dependent upon. It's just a theory. Higher criticism is extremely subjective, theoretical, and that's why anyone knows who's studied it, been forced to study it, that you can find one scholar who has one theory, and then somebody else could come along and come up with their own theory.
01:22:55: That's how you get published. Lower criticism is textual criticism.
01:23:01: You actually are dealing with manuscripts. You're dealing with facts. You're dealing with history. It's not just a matter of coming up with a theory.
01:23:09: You actually have to be able to back it up with manuscripts and facts and artifacts and things like that.
01:23:18: That would be, I think, the best distinction to draw, because that might still involve certain theories as to how you interpret the facts, but at least you have facts that you're dealing with.
01:23:30: The vast majority of—well, give me an example. In my debate with Shabir Ali on is
01:23:38: Muhammad prophesied in the Bible, Shabir takes the very interesting approach of utilizing form criticism and the theories of certain liberal scholars to say, well,
01:23:52: John was put together over a period of time, and John 14, 15, and 16 really wasn't originally a part, and it got put in later, and so he can sort of cut that section out so you can't make direct exegetical conclusions against his position.
01:24:13: Now that's, quote -unquote, higher criticism. There's, of course, one problem. It's not based on facts.
01:24:20: There are no manuscripts where that's the case. We have no manuscripts that can substantiate what was there. It's just people going, well, you know,
01:24:26: I'm not sure that John would have said this. Maybe John would have said that. And it's just a matter of theory.
01:24:32: You theorize, but you have no facts. You can't go back to a manuscript and say, ah, see, here.
01:24:38: Here's where we have a manuscript of the Gospel of John, and it doesn't contain this section. It only appears later on.
01:24:45: They don't have that. So that would be an example of higher versus lower.
01:24:53: The first type of criticism that normally comes out in biblical scholarship is what we would call textual criticism.
01:25:00: Textual criticism, as the particular writing goes out, defines what was approximately written by the specific authors.
01:25:07: One has thousands of manuscripts, thousands of manuscripts of both the Old and the
01:25:13: New Testament, and one needs to reconstruct what was actually said, because we don't have the originally signed autographs of the particular writers.
01:25:20: The scholars have to basically develop what they believe could have been the original. Now, of course, this is the case for any ancient document, and it's also the case for medieval documents, such as the
01:25:33: Quran. Same thing has to happen. It happened in 1924 when somebody put together a particular printing of the
01:25:42: Quran that has become standardized in the majority of the world, at least in the majority of the Arabic -speaking world and beyond.
01:25:50: Somebody made choices, because there are differences between that 1924
01:25:56: Egyptian Quran and what's popular in Pakistan, etc., etc. I'd like to know who made those choices, and in Christianity, you do know.
01:26:06: In fact, Yusuf is going to talk about it. He's going to evidently show a picture of the UBS committee, and here's these older guys with their glasses sitting there doing their thing.
01:26:17: And I'm glad I know who they were, but the reality is, any document that has been transmitted via manuscript has had somebody doing that.
01:26:31: And it's best to know who they were, rather than being ignorant of who they were. So, the
01:26:38: Quran's in the same boat. And what's even more important is, the Quran was in that boat very, very early on with someone named
01:26:47: Uthman. The Uthmanic revision. And though we know the names of some of the men, at least via tradition in the
01:27:00: Hadith, and record a couple of different times in Sahih al -Bukhari, normally 6509 -510, but there are other references to it in Bukhari.
01:27:13: I think in Muslim as well. But anyways, you have some names there, but we are not given much in the way of information as to what they did, why they did it, what sources they used, and that's a real problem for the
01:27:28: Muslim, if if they're willing to really consider it. I've found very few who are.
01:27:35: Very few who are. Because you see, when you have major revision of the text in the most primitive period, you have to trust that those making the revisions have gotten everything right.
01:27:52: Because if it happens later on, there's enough of a manuscript tradition to provide for correction. If it happens early on, and then you have the destruction of preceding materials, which is specifically mentioned by Bukhari, now you've got a real problem.
01:28:07: Now you've got a real problem. And we will pick up with that next time around. Thanks for listening to The Valley Line today, covered a little bit of everything.
01:28:17: Once again, wide ranging, but still hopefully very helpful to you.
01:28:22: Thanks for everybody in the chat channel, including BubbleSqueak, Johnny Redeemed, Farshad, Vicky Ann, I'm just going back,
01:28:32: Diener just came in, we've got Micah and Knox working, and all the rest of the folks you were listening to, thanks for being here.
01:28:43: See, little shout out to all of them. Remember, gonna be gone on Thursday, so we'll see you next week. God bless.
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