Continuation of My Response to Sheikh Awal

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line. On a Tuesday morning, the month of May has passed us by, 2010 is passing us by as well.

Headed over to the Southern California area briefly this weekend.

I'll be speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church on Sunday morning and then coming pretty much straight back doing a wedding in the afternoon, doing a lot of that this weekend in fact.

So going to be busy this weekend and then just a couple of weeks and we're headed off to Dearborn.

It looks, keep praying. It looks like Sheik Awal is back on board with everything.

I hope that that stays that way. I think it would be the best all around.

But looking forward to those debates greatly and then July, preaching most of July at PRBC, going to be in Hebrews, moving into the toughest portion of Hebrews there is.

The meet, the biggest challenge is going to be having to invest a fair amount of time there and then speaking in New York at the beginning of August and then at the end of August.

I'm going to be visiting August twice, getting lots and lots of frequent flyer miles. And of course we can still use your help with the hotels and flying and stuff like that.

And don't forget, I need to blog on this, but one of the big things that I'm aiming for early next year is a visit to the

United Kingdom, which would include seeing a number of the major papyri in regards to the

New Testament. Every time, I mean, I was just having correspondence with a

Muslim apologist and it is obviously extremely useful to be able to pursue certain, the fact that you've examined these things, you've seen those things, is of assistance to your work in those fields.

And so looking forward to February along that lines, I hope to have something on the blog eventually about some of the plans we're making for another trip back to the

United Kingdom. But today, two things before we get back to our response to Sheikh Awal, continue listening to his opening statement.

I was directed to a thread that is developing on the Catholic Answers website about yours truly, and that's always fun.

It really does provide some insight into the mindset of lay

Catholic apologists and to the people who find the continuing repetition of the same surface level arguments, which is what

Catholic Answers is. I'm sorry, but they're saying the same things now. They're saying 20 years ago. Now, on one end, that's a good thing.

We're saying the same things we said 20 years ago, but we listen to what the other people are saying and we try to improve our presentation and make it deeper and make it more consistent and provide more information.

And I have lamented many times and pointed to many times the fact that, especially

Catholic Answers, but Catholic apologetics in general, just seems to be frozen in time. They don't seem to care what anybody else is saying.

They seem to have adopted the idea that if they respond to their critics, then they're giving credibility to their critics.

And since we're the Catholic Church, nobody else is credible anyways. See how that works? And as a result, you know, the arguments that you hear now are on the same level that they were 20, 30 years ago.

And we don't see much in the way of debates going on. I've got three debates this fall with Roberts and Jennis, but most of the folks at Catholic Answers, most of the

Orthodox Catholics, reject Roberts and Jennis as being representative of their positions. So I did hear, and I almost cued it up, but I did hear

Tim Staples saying he's going to be doing less traveling so we can do more debates. Well, good. Maybe soon we'll hear from Catholic Answers.

They're going to make the purgatory debate available to their people. They make the stuff with Steve Gregg available that they did on the phone.

I don't know why Catholic Answers has so far sought to completely ignore the existence of the debate that Tim Staples and I did on purgatory.

Seems very strange. Why would that be? But if he's going to have more time for debates in the future, boy, there's still lots of topics we need to cover.

And so I'm looking forward to getting that call from Catholic Answers, maybe to be on the program and stuff like that.

Sorry, I couldn't get that out of the straight face. I always tried, but that'd be great, that'd be wonderful.

And I've written to Tim, he's ignored all my emails ever since the debate. It's like I don't exist any longer, but I would love to schedule another debate in the future.

And like I said, let's simulcast it or something. We can record on our end, they can play it over a couple days on their end because they have so much less time than we do.

Lots of ways to do this. We'd be very happy to do that. But I was looking through the messages and it seems like they have certain people who automatically come along and they start throwing out the same old tired stuff.

And it's just so predictable. They don't do any research. No one, almost no, well, actually no one

I've seen on that web board has the first interest in trying to be fair, unbiased, unprejudiced, nothing.

They only get one side, the other side doesn't exist. There's one guy, Incanir, Incanir, who knows how it's pronounced, doesn't even have a capital letter in it, but he was blasting away.

And one of the things that he says is that I make my living baiting others and then arranging a debate.

Really? You sort of wonder what planet these folks live on.

Baiting others and arranging a debate. Is that why Catholic Answers was the first organization to ever contact me and challenge me to debate?

I didn't contact Catholic Answers, they contacted me. And there are a lot of folks who contact me and say, would you be willing to debate such and so?

Would you be willing to come up and do a conference and debate such and so, et cetera, et cetera. I actually spend very little of my time trying to pursue anybody.

People contact me and they'll say, you know, what are some of the subjects I could debate? Who might be a good person to get to debate a subject like this?

We have particular interest in this area. For example, the debates with Roberts and Jennis in Santa Fe go back to the fact that the church there said, hey, we've got a lot of Roman Catholics in these areas, we'd like to address these things.

We'd like to have some debates. Okay, great. Well, here's some possible people. They tried getting a hold of Tim Staples, Tim Staples wouldn't do it.

And you know, so eventually, after a couple of years, actually, now we've arranged things with Roberts and Jennis.

So it's funny, baiting and then arranging a debate, then the rest of it says, he then edits the tape and sells it to his followers or anyone gullible enough to buy one.

Now, if by edits the tape, he means that we take multiple camera angles and put them into one consistent whole, then that would be true.

I don't think that's what he's suggesting. It sounds to me like he's suggesting that we actually edit things out of our tapes, which, of course, would be utterly foolish, suicidal.

And of course, that's simply slanderous. It'd be so easy to prove it. And that's why, for example, in the

Ergun Kanner situation, no one's come along, even though John Ankerberg unwisely said that the videos that Mohammed Khan posted had been altered.

What of course he meant by that was he slowed them down so you could hear

Ergun mispronouncing sound as swan, that type of thing.

But that's why we haven't seen any video produced from anybody where Ergun Kanner is not saying it is sort of like what we've seen is

I was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and then the real one comes out and says, I was not born in Istanbul, Turkey.

That's what we would need to say. But we don't see that. It would be absolutely foolish to engage in a debate, provide an unedited master to your opponent and point something else.

We have provided unedited masters of the debates to my opponents, atheists,

Muslims, Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals, whatever, for years.

When I first started doing debates, we didn't have video cameras. We didn't have anything like that. We reproduced our cassette tapes on a ghetto blaster at regular speed.

Actually, I think it was at double speed. Double speed. Yeah. So it only took you 45 minutes for a single C90. I mean, that's how we did things.

And back then, when we debate Catholics, the Catholics did the recording and they wouldn't give us the tapes.

In fact, the videotapes of my first two debates, Mitch Pacwa, languish in a storage room if they haven't been destroyed already.

And they won't give them to us unless we pay them five thousand bucks. And so, you know, we're the ones that provide the unedited masters to both sides.

And so I would just simply say this particular individual here who clearly doesn't have any ability of being unbiased, unprejudiced or anything else is just, you know, just filled with rhetoric.

And these kind of people are very brave behind keyboards. They'd never call this program. You know, we've how many times a guardian was guardian's most call now about four years ago.

I'll be back with that list. Yeah. And that was Catholic answers forums, too. You know, lots of brave people there.

They won't call this number. They won't talk directly to me. No, no, no, no, no, no. But that's that's how he's basically explaining, you know, why

Scott Hahn won't debate or things like that. And I'm sure it's a bit of a problem on their side of the fence.

You know, I mean, their people have got to sit back once while ago. You know, I've heard this stuff a thousand times now.

And if we're so right, why aren't we taking these people on? I don't understand. There's got to be people who eventually voice those concerns and ask those questions.

So anyway, but of course, we have our own. Algo says

Guardian was supposed to call two years ago. OK. All right. Thank you very much. Algo would know two years.

You said two years as well. OK, good. That's nice. It seems like four.

Well, I'm sure it does. Because he was very zealous. I mean, I'll be right with you. You know,

I'll get that list done. What was it? Three months? Yeah, I think I think he wanted three. I think he wanted 90 days, something like that.

Three months like that. Six weeks. I forget what it was. Yeah, never happened. Oh, well, most, you know, of the weekend,

Norman Geisler decided to not comment on the

Erkin Canor situation. What I mean by that is, yeah, he commented, but did he really say anything? As has been pointed out by more folks than just yourself, what he said was self contradictory.

It concluded by saying, let's wait for Liberty's investigation. But it started off with his proclamation of Erkin Canor's innocence.

It really made me chuckle the first time I read it, because it's sort of like it's a completely incoherent. It made no sense.

They're they're they're conflicting statements all the way through it. And it's just purely an exercise in rhetoric, you know,

Muslim groups, you know, one one Muslim student becomes Muslim groups and other extremists.

I guess that's all the rest of us. Who knows who that is? And the libel and slander and vicious attacks.

And it's all just meant to inflame the emotions. And it had nothing to do with the actual situation.

It was not helpful in any way. Now, I didn't point this out. I was aware of this. But the picture that I posted sort of helps you to see this anyways.

But Norman Geisler is not an unbiased observer in this situation.

Most of you know that Norman Geisler left Southern Evangelical Seminary a couple of years ago.

And clearly there was politics involved and infighting and blah, blah, blah. And went across the

United States and now has founded Veritas Seminary or at least is involved with Veritas Seminary.

I'm not sure if he founded it, but he's very much involved with it, lending his support to it. And guess who else is is a professor for Veritas Seminary?

Yes, Ergen Kanner, professor of Islamic studies for Veritas Seminary as well.

So not exactly, you know, an unbiased examination.

And it does make us wonder, I have to admit. I sure hope there are people at liberty with a backbone because the facts are really not in dispute.

I mean, let's face it, folks, when you have videotape, I mean, think of how think of how many big political figures have gone down in flames from a grainy, short, 30 second videotape of buying drugs or accepting money, you know, shot through a little, you know, hole in the wall in a sting operation.

That's all it took. And we have television programs, we have entire sermons and legal documents from all over the place.

It's just like it's incredible the amount of information that's there.

And the question is not what is going to be, you know, discovered and what, you know, the question is, does liberty have the guts to do the right thing?

And what's concerning me is that you picked up from Geisler and we picked up from the internal memo that was that was leaked out and from other people's comments that basically it's no big deal.

This isn't any big deal. You know, OK, let's say he sort of made some stuff up and he and he did some pulpit tearing.

And what was it? Theological leverage is that was that term that Townes used was theological leverage.

You know, out in the real world, we call that lying. But in evangelicalism, it's pulpit tearing.

And if Liberty accepts that and goes, well, you know, we've asked

President Cantor to be a little more specific in the rendition of his history, but we don't see any reason to blah, blah, blah.

Well, I know I know a lot of folks who won't be going to Liberty anymore, that's for sure. I know folks teaching at Liberty that that would have a real hard time staying there in light of such things because they actually believe in truth and honesty and integrity and stuff like that.

So the worst thing could happen, in my opinion, would be to try to cover it up, to try to just, you know, say, ah, it's no big deal.

Something's got to be done now. Something could have been done. Eric Cantor could have stopped all of this in February of this year.

As soon as I contacted him and he knew. That the jig was up, that the information was coming out.

The very fact that in the letter that I sent to him, I linked to a video clip from Mohammed Khan would mean obviously that I knew about the other videos as well.

And that if he did not respond appropriately, he did not give a meaningful answer, that this was going to become public knowledge.

And once it was out outside the Muslim community. Well, there's to be no putting the top back on that bottle, the genie would be out to use a nice little connection there.

So anyway, that's just how that works. So the worst thing could happen, try to paper this over.

Something's got to happen one way or the other. And we will see what what happens. All right, before we go back to shake a wall, we've got a phone call from all the way over in Ireland.

Let's talk with Joe. Hi, Joe. Hello, Joe. Hello, Joe.

One more time for Joe on Skype. Are you there, Joe? OK, I'm not hearing anything.

And everyone in the. In the studio or the control center is looking at me going, well, it's supposed to be there,

Joe, are you there? All right. No, Joe. OK.

All right. We will press forward then with our response to shake a wall. We had gotten to we're still in his opening statement here and we actually lost a little portion of my response.

And so I'm going to sort of back up about one minute so I can have some continuity here.

He starts in on, again, a standard Akhmed thing in regards to 28 different Bibles.

So if we have this set up, what's wrong? Something's wrong with this,

Mike, that happens on Skype. Hopefully you have my computer queued up and there we go.

Elective Azan, they follow conjecture, guess what? That's what happened. I think so. That's why you find contradiction today.

The question is, is the Bible the word of God? I would have discussed that issue, but this is not the issue.

I would approve 100 percent that the Bible have been mutilated, mutilated beyond recognition. Yes, as as I mentioned last time,

I that that's a topic I would like to debate. I would prove 100 percent the Bible's been mutilated beyond recognition.

What what an amazing assertion, given the vast superiority of the

New Testament manuscript tradition to that of the Quran. But I am certain that he really does believe that.

And I cannot know whether he would be willing to listen to the opposite case, but whether or not they listen or not, we have to be prepared to to offer that opposite case.

It's been changed. I have 28 Bibles in my house. I have 28

Bibles in my house. None is the same. The line as in none is the same different books.

The New Testament version, the Revised Standard Version, the Mormon version, the Lutheran version, you think is the same.

It's a holy book, but it is not the same by God. Now, of course, all of those are translations or perversions in the in the in the case of the

Mormon version. I mean, seriously, would would Sheikha Wall take some strange

Islamic cult group, has some prophet that comes along and says, you know, the

Quran's been changed and I'm going to I'm going to restore it. And so he inserts prophecies about himself into Surah 2 and he changes this and he changes that and he adds this and he adds that would shake a wall, except that as having anything to do with with the actual historical accuracy, the transmission of the

Quran, then why even look at Joseph Smith's material? Why even why even quote it?

Why even think that it's relevant? It's not relevant. I mean, Joseph Smith comes farther after the writing of the

New Testament than we can even draw a parallel to for the Quran because it hasn't been enough time yet.

And so if anyone did anything right now to the text of Quran, would that actually have anything to do with what it originally said?

Of course not. And yet there you have that, and of course, to compare the

NIV and the Revised Standard Version, English translations. There are many

English translations of the Quran. Does that mean the Quran has changed? There's at least a dozen.

There's some in modern language. There's some that are sort of free form paraphrases.

Which would probably get their authors killed in certain countries, but the point is they exist. Does that mean the Quran has been changed?

No. If you want to know what the Quran says, you have to look at the Arabic. You want to know the Bible says you have to look at the Hebrew and the Greek. And so he's comparing apples and oranges, and it should be transparently the case.

It will be in Detroit, but it should be transparently the case. Because he left

Catholic and came to protest that, meaning they have different Bible. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Now, he didn't look happy there. I think he really meant you should be ashamed of yourself. This doesn't have the same

Bible. Well, what he means by that not is the text in the sense that Rome uses the

UBS any 27 just as Protestants do in general. But he's referring to the canon in the issue of the

Apocrypha, which, of course, we've addressed many, many times on this program and in our debates.

But that's hopefully what he's referring to there. So I'm going to let it be.

I want you to listen. Keep the emotion to the end. This is a serious issue. My salvation is hung on the cross of Jesus.

If my salvation is on his cross, Jesus Christ has to make an explicit statement that, look,

I am coming to die for you. He never. Which he did over and over and over and over again.

And I'll try to find this later on. And if we're still during the it's hard sometimes to find things in video during the program. But but Jesus makes those explicit statements.

And when his specific prophecy concerning going to Jerusalem and dying and rising in the third day is brought to him during the the question answer period, that's where we got the well, you know, you have

Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus and they're written in the 12th century. And and in those Matthew only has three chapters.

And so that wasn't even there. Utter silliness is presented. That's just not true. And one of the things

I'm going to need to remember to bring with me when I go up to Detroit is I'm going to take that text and I'm going to provide the the scan from Sinaiticus out of that just to prove that.

See, here it is in Matthew and we can take a look at it and put up on the screen and say, now, would you care to rephrase your argument at that point?

I make such a statement. It was written about him more than 300 years after him. Who wrote the book of Matthew?

You ask him, he will say Matthew wrote it. Matthew did not write the book of Matthew, which you quoted from.

How do I know? The book of Matthew, chapter nine, verse nine. Listen to what happened. It says, while he,

Jesus, was going out on the way, he saw a man sitting on a taskmaster's table and Jesus said, follow him.

And Matthew rose and followed him. Did Matthew wrote this book? Matthew did not write this book. Someone else was writing.

If Matthew wrote it, it would have been while Jesus Christ was walking on the way, he saw me sitting down and he said, follow me.

And I rose and followed him. But this one, somebody else is writing these books. Now, as I look at him, he really thinks this is an unanswerable statement.

He really thinks that no author of antiquity. Ever narrated any event, especially when he's talking about somebody else in the third person, that every author of antiquity would have to have gone to first person.

He saw me and he called me. Even if he was keeping himself out of it, which, oh, wait a minute.

Matthew is a synonymous work. There's no, I'm sorry, not synonymous work.

Matthew is an anonymous work. There's no name attached at all. So why would he, if he doesn't insert his name, switch to the first person?

In fact, that doesn't make any sense at all, does it? And yet Che Guevara really thinks it's an unanswerable question, unanswerable argument.

Which, again, demonstrates that this is not true 100 percent of the time, but in my experience is true 99 .98

percent of the time. And that is right outside that door around the corner is an entire shelf filled with Islamic books written by Islamic authors.

Some of the sets were multiple hundreds of dollars. One set was about six, about six hundred dollars,

I recall, just for the set. This is their writings, Tafsir literature, commentary literature.

We look at Ibn Kathir, we look at al -Qurtabi, we look at the Hadith, we look at that material.

Before we make arguments in regards to certain texts, for example, extremely important text,

Surah 6, 101 says that that God cannot have a son because he does not have a unless he has a sabiha, a mate, a consort.

Well, before I ever brought that up in public, I took the time to get out al -Qurtabi,

I looked at Ibn Kathir, I looked the text up. I want to know what the classical

Islamic sources say about these particular texts. I don't find

Muslims to do that. They just don't. They just read the

Bible and there are shelves of incredible commentaries.

Consistent, in -depth, historical, exegetical commentaries on the Bible. Do they look at them?

Well, the ones who do are looking for things to just, you know, try to shred it. They much prefer the liberals who don't believe in the text.

They don't really bother reading the commentaries by people who do believe in the text, which I find extremely inconsistent and rather sad.

But that's the way that it is. So this is not much of an argument. First of all,

Matthew doesn't have a name attached to it, so it's not a hill to die on. But even beyond that, does this mean that this somehow is, you know, well, that means it's much later removed and blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, in no way, shape or form. But he looks very pleased with that particular argument.

And where did it come from? It came from Ahmadinejad. I'm telling you, so Mr. Lallaro, I hope next time you bring your guru, your pastor, your big man, so he could talk to me.

But it looks like I'm fighting with my cousin, fighting with a kid. That's how it looks like. I'm not kidding.

Now, he's sitting there saying, keep your emotions down, but he's raising the emotions. He's just said, shame on you.

He says, bring your your your guru, your pastor, your big guy next time. I feel like I'm fighting with a kid. So he's the one raising the raising the emotions here while telling other people to keep that down.

I'm not sure that's really the way to go. You didn't give me anything. Thirty minutes wasted for nothing.

Talk about the issue. The issue is salvation through Jesus, through the Bible or through the Quran. And you've never taught this subject.

All you do is to go to some Bukhari somewhere, you know, some books, talk to me about salvation.

But I'm giving you a quotation. I'm proving from your book that Christ did not die on the cross and the evidence is so clear.

But the books as it is, it's been changed. Where? In the book of Jeremiah, chapter eight, verse eight, it says,

Do you think that we have the law of Moses in our hand? No, the pen of those who write the

Bible have turned it into a lie. I didn't say. Now, that one, Jeremiah, chapter eight, it'd be good if we if we took a look at that one sometimes.

Someday we're going to have a full scripture index to all of the videos on YouTube someday.

We really need it. Because I have addressed this in the videos on YouTube, and I did so because this is a very common text used by Islamic apologists to try to say that the

Bible itself says it's been corrupted. Now, this is an abuse of Jeremiah. It is a contextual, but it's there.

So let's let's. And remember, Sheikha Wall quotes Bible verses, but he doesn't quote them accurately.

He may not know it. I'm not accusing him of purposeful dishonesty on the matter, but he very frequently does not quote them accurately, just as Dave Hunt can't seem to quote

Matthew 23, 37 correctly. In the same way, Sheikha Wall has problems, many of the texts that he that he quotes as well.

How can you say, Jeremiah 8, 8 says, how can you say we are wise and the law of Yahweh is with us?

But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. Now.

The reading that the Muslim uses at this point is to say that when the scribes say we are wise, the law of Yahweh is with us, when it says the lying pen of the scribes has made into a lie, what he's saying is that they've actually perverted or changed the word of God.

Rather than accusation that it is the scribes who are lying, not the word of God has been changed.

But when you continue reading the text, and by the way, Sam Shimon has addressed this as well, it has some material on this if you want to take a look at it in more depth.

But notice what it goes on to say, the wise men, shall we put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh.

So what wisdom is in them? Not they've perverted, not they've changed, not they've destroyed, they have rejected the word of Yahweh.

What was the word of Yahweh? Well, Jeremiah was bringing a message of destruction.

That the religious leaders in Jerusalem were deceiving the people when they were saying peace, peace, and there is no peace.

And so it says that they have rejected the word of the Lord, therefore, I will give their wise to others in their fields to conquerors, because in the least of the greatest, everyone is greedy for unjust gain.

From prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely, the lying pens of the scribes, they're the ones that write, now here you see the prophets, they deal falsely.

They have healed the wound of my people, lightly saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?

No, they were not at all ashamed. They did not know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among the fallen.

When I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says Yahweh. When I would gather them, declares Yahweh, there are no grapes in the vine, nor figs in the fig tree, even the leaves are withered.

And what I gave them has passed away from them. Why do we sit still, gather together, let us go into the fortified cities and perish there, for the

Lord our God has doomed us to perish, has given us poison water to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord. We look for peace, but no good came for a time of healing, but behold, terror.

And so he is bringing a message of judgment upon the people.

But Jeremiah will go on and repeatedly hold the people accountable to the very word of the

Lord, which would be impossible if the interpretation they are giving of Jeremiah 8 .8

is the correct interpretation, which, of course, it is not.

This is why it's in your book. Jeremiah chapter 8, verse 8, I repeat,

Jeremiah 24, 24, Jeremiah 8 .8, the new, the national version said, think not that we have the law of Moses and the prophet in our hand.

So behold, the pen of the scrub have turned the Bible in vain. That's not what it says.

They turn it in vain. That's that's just not what it says. Jeremiah, he said,

Jeremiah 24, 10, and I will send sword, famine and pestilence upon them until they shall be utterly destroyed in the land that I gave to their fathers.

Was it Jeremiah 24, 10? Is that what he said? Sounded like it. Maybe maybe it's 24, 24.

There is no 24, 24, there's only 24, 10. Well, hard, hard to respond to one when there is no 24, 24.

The only way I could find that out is to see if I can back it up a little bit here. Let's see if I got far enough back.

Do you think that we have the law of Moses in our hand? No, the pen of those who write the

Bible have turned it into a lie. I didn't say this way. It's in your book. Jeremiah, Jeremiah 24, 24,

Jeremiah, it's it that he said, Jeremiah 24, 24. There's only 10 verses in Jeremiah 24.

So again, you know, it's very impressive to an audience, do anything by memory if your memory is good.

But this simply isn't what either Jeremiah eight or Jeremiah 24 actually said.

The national version said, think not that we have the law of Moses and the prophet in our hands. Behold, the pen of the scrub have turned the

Bible in vain. That's just not what Jeremiah says. That's not even close to what Jeremiah says.

So we have a need to check citations and check them quickly during debates, to be sure.

They turn it in vain and the Quran confirm. But that's not the application the

Quran actually makes in that text to the Torah or the Injil. In fact, if you interpret that text that way, then the entire argument for the prophet of Muhammad in Surah five, beginning about verse forty five, is turned on its head.

So it sounds real good, but in my experience, most Muslims just don't actually interpret the

Quran in any consistent fashion. They just use it as a textbook, as a as a book filled with different texts that they can use in their own way.

So the issue at hand is a big one. The issue at hand, it is not an easy, it is about salvation, but I'm giving you

Matthew chapter five, verse seven, where Jesus said, do not think that I have come to destroy the law of Moses and the other prophets.

No, I have not come to destroy, I have come to fulfill. And we point out that that has nothing to do with Jesus' death, because it is

Jesus' death that actually fulfills the prophecies of the law and the prophets and fulfills the law itself.

So only by misrepresenting what the authors themselves intended in those texts can you make that kind of argument.

Whosoever cancel a law, a law cancel or adopt from the law of Moses shall become least, but whosoever do the law of Moses shall become great.

So Jesus Christ is coming to confirm the law of Moses. And as we read in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 30,

Jeremiah said, the father shall not bear the iniquity of the son, nor the son bear the iniquity of the father.

The book of Ezekiel, chapter eight. And the reason for the citation of this is what?

I mean, that's not even a meaningful interpretation. No interpretation was given. I guess you're throwing it out there to try to hope that people interpret it in a way that's amenable to your position.

But try providing some contextual exegesis. Okay, what does that mean?

What did it mean in the days of Jeremiah? What was the proverb about the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth have been set on edge?

What about the fact that they use that as a reason to not repent, etc., etc.,

etc.? So you can't just throw text out and not deal with the context.

That's not an appropriate. That's not appropriate for anybody to do. That's not appropriate for Christians to have the

Quran. It's not appropriate for Muslims to do it about the Bible, either. Verse 20, it says,

God speaking, God Almighty speaking, behold, all souls are mine.

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The father shall not bear the iniquity of the son, neither the son bear the iniquity of the father.

The wickedness of the wickedness shall be upon him, and the righteousness of righteousness shall be upon him. But if the wicked turn around and do which is good,

I, God Almighty, I will blot his sin, and I will never remember it. This is Islam. No, that's not

Islam. That, again, completely ignores the issue in Jeremiah chapter 18.

I would direct you to the Wednesday evening devotional that I gave about a month and a half ago now, it is on YouTube, where I went through Jeremiah 18.

I did it by actually looking at the text, not just by quoting portions of it, and gave the context regarding the proverb that the people were using as a means of avoiding

God's call to repentance. So, well, there's no reason for us to repent. God has already doomed us, and this is why, and it's not really our sin, it's the sin of our fathers, and so on and so forth.

That is not Islam because that ignores the prophecies of the book of Jeremiah, of the coming branch, and how forgiveness is wrought, et cetera, et cetera.

Again, it's just removing things in their context, throwing them out there, and putting them in a new context in hopes that people go, ah, yes, that fits what

I believe. So there you go.

There's no federal headship. I wasn't there, so I can't be held responsible.

And again, that is Islam. Islam has a very different view of sin than does the

Bible, and you need to understand that, and you need to be prepared to defend the concept of federal headship, even though most

Christians are not prepared to do that in any way, shape, or form, but that is something that is necessary.

And I'm going to say, oh, Adam, you are forgiven. He said, you know what, this sin is too great, it's too powerful,

I cannot forgive. What I'm going to do is this, that I'm going to wait 5 ,000 years after Adam, I will come in the womb of a human being, a

Mary, and then she will give birth, and I will become a human being, and I will walk and talk, and then I will be beaten,

I will be kicked, I will be slashed, I will be cut, I will be beaten, I will be stripping naked, and then with a napkin, hang on the cross, then my blood will suffer the blood.

Is this what it's supposed to be? Now, that's just pure mockery, especially watching it.

And again, that's not helpful for any kind of meaningful dialogue, especially when

Sheikha Wall has demonstrated such gross ignorance of the texts that he has manhandled thus far.

And I, again, would just simply call upon everyone involved in this kind of encounter that truth is worth investment in and energy devoted toward.

And so the idea of engaging in mockery, especially when the arguments you're using, you've never actually done the research that you need to do to find out if they're really true or not, is really not something that should be done.

And I would call upon all Christians to not do that in regards to Islam, whether the

Muslims do it to us is really up to them. See, as soon as I hear someone say that, who claims to have been doing all this studying and claims to have been doing all this work,

I immediately have clear evidence that this person does not understand the position that he's criticizing.

As soon as you hear someone say that when

Jesus died, who was controlling the universe? God was. But you said

Jesus was God and he died. Two problems. Problem number one, you don't even believe that death is non -existence.

Even you believe that when someone dies, their spirit continues to exist and goes to either heaven or hell. Think logically here, just for a moment.

Why would you think that when Jesus died, he ceases to exist? I've never had anyone answer that who would raise this objection.

Secondly, we don't believe that it was the father who became flesh. We don't believe it was the

Holy Spirit who became flesh. It was the son who became flesh. So even if death meant non -existence, which it doesn't for either one of our religions, but even if it did, the father didn't die and the spirit didn't die.

So the argument is as bogus as a day is long. I mean, it's difficult to even come up with a parallel bogus argument in regards to Muhammad or the

Quran. It's just, this is a bad argument and it's embarrassing to make bad arguments.

But it's a very, very commonly made bad bogus argument. Ocean nations, imagine

Pigeon Sound. That director on the Pigeon Sound, if he goes to sleep, the whole world will burn. A galaxy, billions and billions of galaxies, where are they going?

Who's three days you said he died? Kaput. Who controls the universe?

The logic cannot accept this. Yeah, the logic would require that you actually accurately represent the religion that you're denying and that you are in fact at this point mocking.

And if you're not accurately representing it, then the logic would be that you're the one who should be ashamed of yourself for raising that kind of argument because it's that bad.

It really is that bad. Logic will never accept this. So Christ did not die on the cross.

Why did I say that? If you look at the book of Luke 24 -36.

When the disciples ran away, they didn't know what happened. They didn't know where Jesus went. What happened to him, they don't know.

They went to the upper room. So Jesus walked in the upper room, Luke 24 -36.

And Jesus walked in the upper room. And he said to the disciples, please be unto you. And the disciples were terrified and afraid because they thought they have seen a ghost.

What did he said? He said, please be unto you, to the disciples. That's what the Bible said, Luke 24 -36.

Check it out. Luke 24 -36. Jesus walked in the upper room. And the disciples, and he said, please be unto you.

I'm asking, did Jesus say, please be unto you? Did he said, please be unto you in English?

What language did he spoke? Hebrew? Or, you know, Aramaic? In Aramaic, how do you say, please be unto you?

Please be unto you in Hebrew and Aramaic is shalom aleichem. Which is what we say, shalom aleichem. Have you ever said shalom aleichem to your friend?

No. We follow Jesus. We say shalom aleichem to us. So if you use a particular greeting, you can reject everything

Jesus taught. You can reject everything he taught about his death. You can reject everything about what he taught about his person. You can reject all of that stuff.

But if you use two words, peace to you, then you're following Jesus.

It truly is amazing. But there are people who go, ah, see, we're following Jesus. Because, you know, he bows down once in prayer.

Other times he doesn't. But he bows down once in prayer and he says, peace to you. So we're the followers of Jesus. Even though we reject everything else

Jesus taught, and even go so far as to say, as we heard him say, that these are all things written down 300 years later, and blah, blah, blah.

Which, of course, they were not. But, you know, that's the argument. He said, shalom aleichem.

And they said, wa aleichem shalom. Instead of saying, wa aleichem shalom, they said, and they were terrified and afraid.

Because they thought they had seen a ghost. Why are they thinking that it's a ghost? Because they thought he was on the cross. They didn't see him.

So Jesus Christ went to assure them. Now remember, Peter has followed

Jesus to the trial. John is at the cross. But he's skipping that part.

That part's inconvenient. He wants to promote the idea that they all just ran away, and that was it.

They went to the upper room, they hid there, and they never came out. And Peter didn't do the denials, and he didn't go to the trial.

And John wasn't at the foot of the cross with Mary. And none of that happened. So you just chop it up, get rid of the inconvenient part, and then create a whole new thing and say, well, this is what your own book says.

Well, sure. And, of course, we could do that to Quran and turn it into a mishmash of self -contradictory silliness if we wanted to do that.

But that doesn't accomplish anything. Well, we will pick up at that point the next time that we continue our response.

We're getting very close to the end of his opening statement. Well, we're going to try once again to talk to Joe in Ireland.

Let's see if we can talk to Joe. Hi, Joe. Hi, Dr. White. Can you hear me? I can hear you now. Excellent.

Good stuff. Sorry about earlier. I don't know what happened. But my question really is on 1

John 5, 7, the Kami Ohanian. I'm just reading through the King James Controversy at the moment.

Recently I had the interest and privilege to hear a man from the

Trinitarian Bible Society do a talk on the King James Version by the name of Dr.

David Allen, based out of the U .K. I asked him a question in his presentation in the

Q &A section about 1 John 5, 7. While he accepted that obviously the majority of Greek manuscripts are against 1

John 5, 7 being included, he did argue that early texts from the 2nd century, like some of the

Coptic and Egyptian manuscripts, did contain the verse. I just didn't see any mention of that on your treatment in your book, so I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

That's just not true. The only thing you can come up with are some patristic citations that sound like it, but it's not an ancient text.

And as I've said many, many times, anybody who argues in defense of the

Kami Ohanian does so in such a way as to destroy any confidence we could ever have in the

New Testament. If you accept, let's say, and I'm unaware of any 2nd century translation or anything else that could be validly said to contain the

Kami Ohanian in 1 John. Let's say it does. That means you and I have absolutely no reason to believe that anything in the

New Testament goes back to the originals, because that means that an entire theologically important text can simply disappear out of the

Greek manuscript tradition and be gone, not to be restored for 1 ,600 years until they're brought in from a

Latin translation or a Coptic or a Sahidic or whatever else. And therefore, we would have to scour all those translations and have to come up with some means of restoring all sorts of texts that we would find there, even though they're only found in translations, because, fundamentally, you have to argue the

Greek manuscript tradition is grossly flawed. And if that's the case, then when these translations are in contradiction to one another, which ones do we choose?

Do we restore all of them? I don't know of any single person from the Trinitarian Bible Society that would be consistent in the application of that form of thinking anywhere else in the

New Testament, anywhere. And so, A, that demonstrates they're being grossly inconsistent. They have an external authority, which is the

King James Version of the Bible that they're following. But secondly, if they follow their own thinking at that point, then they have no reason whatsoever to continue to then utilize the majority text arguments that they normally rely upon, even though there's over 1 ,800 differences between the textus receptus and the majority text.

They normally give general majority text Byzantine platform argumentation, but they have no reason to do that now, because just because it's in the majority text is irrelevant.

The original may not be in the Greek anywhere. And so they'd have to go to the Coptic. They'd have to go to the

Sahidic. They'd have to go to Syriac. They'd have to go to Latin. And they'd have to start putting together all those texts that exist only in those translations that are not found in the

Greek and bring them in. And it would result, if they were consistent, in a whole sale re -editing of the textus receptus into a form that no one has ever seen before.

And so it really concerns me that there are still people who, because of their dedication to an

English translation from the 17th century, will actually end up promoting theories that completely undercut the validity of the entire methodology and the supremacy of the

Greek manuscript tradition, and in essence agree with Bart Ehrman that we cannot know, because that's what they're saying.

Based on the Greek manuscript tradition, we cannot know, because we have to go to these other sources to try to find entire texts that have simply fallen out of the

Greek text. It is a radical position, even though it's held by people who are attempting to be extremely conservative.

But it's a radical position. It's indefensible, but there are people who do it, and I'd say they do it out of dedication to tradition.

But it concerns me greatly. It really, really does. Did he give any specifics? Because the only way you can respond to something is if you have specifics.

Well, he didn't give any specific manuscripts, like the way, for example, in your book you would refer to different manuscripts when you're setting up the whole idea of textual transmission in the earlier chapters of the book.

He didn't cite anything specific. He argued from a – also from a contextual point of view, commenting on R .L.

Dabney, I believe, that R .L. Dabney apparently argued that if you excluded verse 7, it would make nonsense out of the context.

Yeah, that's a common error as well. It's been repeated. All they can do is keep repeating the same errors that have been made in the past.

That isn't the case. Again, to start arguing on the basis of style, for conservatives, see, style is the very foundation upon which many people then dismiss all sorts of other texts in form criticism and redaction criticism and say, well, you know, this doesn't sound like John Stile, so this shouldn't be here.

Are they, again, consistent? I have never found King James Only advocates to be consistent in any way, shape, or form.

Now, I'm looking at – I brought up the Nessie Olland apparatus here just to see if I can see what you're referring to in regards to this.

And I am not seeing anything here. Of course, if this thing would get out of the way so I could see it.

Sometimes Logos drives me insane. There we go.

I see Greek manuscripts cited.

I see Vulgate manuscripts cited. And I see at the very bottom,

I have the text, codexes, rest of Greek texts and others.

But that's where the Sahidic, Boheric, and Syriac is listed. And that's giving the text without the insertion.

So unless someone can provide the specifics of what evidence from the second century is being cited, there's no way

I can respond to it. Okay. Dr. White, I appreciate your time.

And I really am enjoying the book. I just finished Scripture Alone and picked up the

King James Only Controversy. I'm really enjoying it. And thanks very much for your work.

And I'd just like to add as well that I found that The Potter's Freedom has been just a tremendous book.

Even after I came to the Doctrines of Grace, it's just been – it's really helped in dealing with certain argumentation from our minions.

But also I'd just like to say – You mean for moderate Calvinists? All right. Yeah. I mean

I have to say like right before reading The Potter's Freedom, I wanted to try and be consistent in approaching the issue.

So I read Norman Geister's book first, Chosen but Free, and it was really frustrating to read it. And I also just wanted to say

I really am planning to come to the States in August for the two conferences you're speaking at in New York.

So hopefully it will be good to meet you and look forward to hearing you speak. Well, good. Good. Excellent. Well, I look forward to it. Hopefully it won't be too hot in New York at that particular point in time.

But we'll look forward to seeing you then. Okay. Well, thanks very much. Thanks for hanging on, Joe. Thank you.

God bless. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. Well, thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. We will continue,

Lord willing, on Thursday. Who knows what developments may take place between now and then.

But if nothing overly major, we're getting pretty close to finishing up the opening statement here.

Hopefully it's useful to you to hear these arguments and to think through the responses to them. We'll continue on The Dividing Line next time around.

Thanks for listening. God bless. I believe we're standing at the crossroads.

Let this moment of suffering wait. We must contend for the faith above us fought for.

We need a new Reformation day. It's a sign of the times.

I stand up for...

The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.