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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. It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll-free across the United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five. Three three three four one and now with today's topic.

Here is James White.

And good morning. Welcome to the dividing line on a Tuesday morning the 17th Day of the month of February 2009. Thank you for Listening. I was gonna say tuning in but tuning is sort of that's an irrelevancy anymore, isn't it?

I mean is entering a URL the same as tuning really isn't. Because I remember tuning folks. Let me tell you something. I remember what tuning was like we've been you are old. We've been you are old. Amazing how early the language has changed it has changed much but we still use old words because we're old.

But I guess you still call tuning in it doesn't really matter. Hey a couple things. First of all done. We're cheap around here. We don't have the special music. It used to work in Merc. I used to be able.

I don't. I do not know why this doesn't work anymore. Sound 20th that way. You'll like it when it works the problem is when it doesn't work. I Have no idea how do computers just heal themselves. It's Windows man.

That's just that's just how it is. It's it's this way it is anyway, I Mentioned I don't know at least a month or so ago that I we were working on our next major debate. And then I didn't say anything about it and that's because it got sort of put off.

And the reason it got put off is interestingly enough. Due to the conflict in Gaza. Yes, how can a debate be put off due to a conflict in Gaza because obviously the debate has to do with Islam. But we have now Established a date.

I'm waiting for the specifics on the location, but I can tell you this much we are looking at May 2nd and 3rd two evenings and And this will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and It will be in the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.

That is right there in the heart of the city. And I will be debating Zulfiqar Ali Shah one night on The reliability of the New Testament the second night on the reliability of the Quran or whichever order I'm not sure that order what's gonna go but That will be there in At their assembly hall on the ground of the mosque.

And so we are really hoping to have a very good representation from the Islamic community and I'm very excited about that. Some of you have seen we haven't been able to put up the entirety of the debate with dr Shah from Duke University.

Which was not technically a debate but we can call the debate now because it's over with. But it's very short and just sort of a almost just a preview of what we'll be able to do over the two nights in in Milwaukee in May and The encounter that we had was very encouraging.

We hope to be able to do a number of subjects. And so this will be the first step in that and so very much looking forward to this and we'll be putting it up on the website as soon as we can and If you are in the Midwest I know a lot of you folks in the Midwest sort of feel like you're in the flyover zone and Most everything happens in California, Florida or New York and you don't get to be a part of it.

Well Now you've you've got an opportunity. So May 2nd and 3rd in Milwaukee at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and I will be debating dr Zulfiqar Ali Shah on that particular on those particular subjects.

So keep that in mind also just in passing I Will be at the end of May we'll be up with Bill McKeever in Salt Lake City at his conference up there doing my presentation on the New Testament, which Should be even better by then given all the study I'm doing in that area I'm not sure how to cram all that into the amount of time I'm given anymore.

It's almost frustrating but we'll be doing that at the end of May. I believe it's 29th as I recall Folks down in down under gonna be down in Brisbane at the end of July as I recall down there in in Australia and Looking forward to that because it will be your cold time of the year and it'll be our hot time here so I don't mind getting out of the heat and humidity around that time of the year to be certain and then in September Those of you in the Santa Fe area.

I was over at Calvary Santa Fe in September of 2008 and I'm gonna be back in September of 2009 Bruce Where's gonna be speaking along with myself and others at the conference there? And so I'm definitely looking forward to that as well had a great time with the folks there at Calvary Santa Fe and Looking forward to getting back there.

There was a restaurant right across the streets and about a blue tortilla or something like that I have no idea what where the name came from, but I love the food. It was good stuff. It was good stuff.

What was that? Son about our pie is it. Is it owned by Joe our pile? Why. You know, he serves green bologna here. Oh, okay.

All right pink underwear. And yeah, okay. That's that's Joe our pile. So anyway, so keep in mind folks if your church has been sitting there going I wonder I wonder I wonder If you don't get in touch with me, there's no way we find out whether I can be of assistance to you or not so Go ahead and ask because things are filling up fairly quickly right now for 2009 and Always enjoy the opportunity of getting in touch with folks and meeting folks and coming to speak and things like that now we are working On the possibility of doing things a little differently in the future not that I want to stop going and meeting people.

But especially given the economic realities of the world we are really looking into using the internet and Here's just the idea that we're playing with right now be interested in your feedback on it. But we are looking at what we've thought of doing is taking a number of my standard presentations videotaping them here and Providing the DVD to folks and then what we would do is we would use the internet.

You'd make the presentation because that's normally fairly lengthy and you know the internet can still be intermittent at times and then we would connect up and The new edition of Skype according to Dale May well be what we want to use it has desktop sharing it has 640 by 480 instead of the small window.

It's got a larger window higher resolution now and we would connect up either I would be in a conference room that we have or just at my desk like I do my YouTube videos and I would be able to see you and you would be able to see me and We would be able to do Q &A on the presentation that was just made Live that way, but it wouldn't cost the church the the cost of The airline ticket and the hotel and the huge amounts of food that I eat.

Everybody who's had me in is chuckling at that because they're always sort of amazed it. Anyway, but It would be a whole lot easier and then I get to go home afterwards which is another way of increasing the Number of people we can get to and the Q &A and the sort of the interaction that way and I can see you I can Hear you you can see me hear me and we would have that type of interaction.

So I think that would Would be pretty cool and more and more churches have the the high-speed internet access. They have digital projectors. It's just a matter of sticking a webcam, I mean you could literally just put a Mac or something like that.

My Mac has a built-in webcam. Most most of it have built-in webcams now you could simply put that on a table in front of a microphone and have people walk up and You could be projecting what's on it so they could see me I could see them and we could have interaction.

It'd be a great way of doing that. So I think that would that would be great. Yeah. Thanks Barton channel just said just serve the doc Chinese that saves a ton of money. Yeah, it certainly does except the Chinese food goes to waste too.

So that's That's that's that's that good. So there's some of the things that's coming up there and I'm excited about that Have a number of things. I guess I'll start off with this one I It starts off saying this is going to be a first for me.

But I have to agree with James White in one of his latest videos. I know pigs are flying and cows have sprouted wings. That's Matthew Bellisario the Catholic champion who normally has nothing but disdain for me likes to mock hats or Whatever.

I'm sure he's probably Making up a collection right now of bow ties images of bow ties as well, but He saw my video in which I lamented the recent Patrick Madrid Book that came out and I just pointed out something that's rather obvious.

It's a it's a given. It's a fact and I think Catholic apologists know this in their more honest moments and that Is they live on fluff? Their Apologetic responses are fluff. They don't listen to What people are saying about their fluffy responses and when it comes to? exegesis.

They just don't bother. I think the Catholic apologists know in their heart of hearts that the scholarship of Rome today has Gone Far away from where they are theologically. It is not that you can't go find High-end scholarship quote-unquote in Roman Catholic Biblical studies, I mean you can go and get Fitzmeyer and Brown and so on so forth but they are as liberal as the day is long and The Catholic apologist doesn't find liberalism to be over amenable to apologetics.

And so they are really in stuck in a schizophrenic situation. They believe firmly what was believed 150 years ago, but in their more honest moments, they've got admit. They are not in the majority any longer especially when it comes to the viewpoints of priests and bishops and Those in authority within the Roman Catholic Magisterium and that gives them a bit of a problem and I understand that.

So Matthew Bellisario says there is a it says I Must admit there is a great lack of scholarship in the modern Catholic apologetics world today in general. There is a real need for faithful Catholic scholars these days to step up and put out some scholarly works.

There isn't much too many of these Catholic apologetics works that are coming out these days. There are rarely notes and sources given many of these books. Although sometimes sufficient for novices are not worth much beyond that.

This is not an attack on any of these Catholic apologists person I like Patrick Madrid and the folks at Catholic answers. I do have a feel that we really need to step it up when it comes to scholarship printing a book with a few scripture Quotes with a few paragraphs to expound is just not gonna cut it anymore.

See, this is Matthew's problem. He's listening to the other side. He needs to adopt the attitude of Jimmy Akin and Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid and that is the other side doesn't exist. We don't we don't yeah, we just stick our fingers in our ears.

They're not there they're not worthy of our even listening to them see poor Matthews trying to interact with what's being said and That's where he's taking a different attack than everybody else's. I Think that the target audiences audience at novices has been exhausted.

There's plenty material out now for that purpose. We need in-depth apologetics material when we look at previous works by Catholic scripture scholars. They would take a whole chapter to expound on each scripture passage using the church fathers church councils and exploration Languages to back up their work.

I will readily admit that I am no scholar and I do not have the tools to read Greek and expound upon the original Text and so forth. I do I recite my sources whenever I write an article and provide the sources that I use so people can do their own research And verify what I've written etc. Etc.

But again Matthew's problem is that he's not taking the majority perspective and that is you don't listen to the other side you just worry about your audience and That's Afraid what you've what you've got to do and that's the perspective they're coming from.

Then I was listening as I was writing yesterday To a couple things as you may have noticed on the blog this morning. I posted a Video that I I started working on last night. I wanted to get a bunch of videos done last night.

I was all revved up. I get a bunch of videos done last I got one. But I was gonna make them like five to ten minutes. I was actually make short videos remember short videos. Says I got that YouTube partner thing man.

It's like hey, this is great. Let's put up an hour in five minutes and not everybody can take an hour in five minutes, and I understand that. But if you're looking for information then it you know, it's useful along those lines and so I Last evening posted a single video 20 almost 26 minutes in length in which I waxed long.

In response to Christopher Hitchens one of the things I listened to on my ride yesterday is a fairly lengthy ride of about 40 miles and I listened to the beginning anyways over half I would say of The Frank Turk probably close to all now to think about it was it was in the audience questions and the audience questions.

Were getting less than useful, which is audience questions do do everything else with you, but Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens on the existence of God and So I put up an article YouTube video last night dealing with the Hitchens question that he always uses and Tried to more fully respond to it than I have in the past since I now had video rather than just simply Saying what he said and then responding to it and so I had talked about once before but it's a little bit longer now.

So I put that up and I want to respond. I pulled five or six segments from Hitchens where he's making particular arguments, and I am going to also Play the part where he nails Frank Turek now nails not in the sense of winning the debate.

He didn't even try to respond almost anything that Frank Turek presented. There's no question about that, and I think just simply on a meaningful debate level. Where you're actually going all right? Here's where the positive argument was made.

Did the negative side Respond what the positive side said. Is there a real interaction here? There wasn't all Hitchens does is whine in a very British accent about religion and He shows absolutely no concern Whatsoever for accuracy of understanding he brought up limbo in this debate and said that they had just gotten rid of limbo and They did no such thing.

It was not a dogma in the first place. It was a clarification blah blah it's not even fair when dealing with groups that I disagree with and I've got to be consistent pointing that out, and and he just lumps us all in with the Pope and things like that and That's just the way that Christopher Hitchens is so he just He's just playing on the emotions.

He's just getting people all excited. You know his followers all excited about hating God and joining him and rebellion against God as if somehow That was going to accomplish something so that's. That that's on that level.

There really wasn't much of a contest, but it was interesting to hear Hitchens Properly identify. The main problem with evidentialist apologetics and Frank Turek is norm Geisler's chief student in fact I detected a number of Norman Geisler's jokes in Frank Turek's presentation and Frank did I think make the mistake and I do believe this is always a mistake.

It was a mistake that That Greg Stafford avoided making for example, and that is he admitted. This was his first formal debate. I Don't think that when you stand up in front of an audience. You should tell them Hey, it's first time I've ever done this guy sort of like going into the doctor.

You know you get a young doctor. It is not gonna inspire confidence when he says hey, you're my first patient say ah Yeah, you just don't want to go there. So my suggestion to everybody is when you do your first debate if you ever do a formal debate.

Don't go up there and tell people this is your first debate. Just focus on the subject and don't waste nearly as much time as Frank Turek did at the beginning with With preliminaries that have nothing to do with the subject of the debate especially when you're debating someone like Christopher Hitchens so anyway Hitchens Nailed the weakness of evidentialist apologetics.

He said did you notice that? Dr. Turek went from deist to theist To Christian without ever explaining how he managed to do that and he was right that's where the evidentialist apologetic falls apart is.

You know it says well I can't argue for the Christian God because from the evidentialist perspective the uniqueness of the Christian God is just an add-on to the Vague general idea of a God you see and so from their perspective you reason from a God To a more specific kind of God finally to the Christian God and the presuppositionalist says baloney Can't do it wrong God and I remember the first time that I heard My apologetics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary yes Fuller Theological Seminary.

I had a Presbyterian Professor and I thought it was great that that he He said this because it helped me out a lot once. I figured out what in the world he was saying but he was the one who said Thomas Aquinas proved the wrong God and There was a background to that.

But he was right and so it is interesting that in the haze of Hitchin ism He is still able to recognize that. Yeah, you know. You didn't really quite establish How you managed to go from one point to the next point to the next point?

In your in your argumentation there, and I'm not sure I can wave my arms any more than this. Someone's not paying attention. But I got their attention so. So that actually I wasn't gonna talk about that.

What I was gonna say was that was part of what I listened to on the ride yesterday. What I listened to beforehand was a presentation. I've monitored a Particular blog called LDS voices, and I've looked for Information About Mormonism, you know Mormonism used to be really the primary thing that we were involved with you know every six months we were in Salt Lake City, and we're out in Mesa and You know our emphasis clearly has moved elsewhere and Mormonism has been changing in that time.

I've said many times there. There's a tremendous contrast between The Mormon that you encounter today and the Mormon that you encountered when we first started doing this in the middle 1980s and Mormonism in many ways has lost its way but there are still of course those believing Mormons out there, and so I was listening to a BYU, Idaho devotional from June of 2004.

By Noel B Reynolds professor of political science at Brigham Young University Noel B Reynolds and I found some of the things he said very interesting. And you'll see why I I did let's let's listen first to this this little little clip right here.

But why do we assume that they were effective? The collapse of the church in the first century suggests that many of them were not. When the second century opens we are confronted with clear evidence of a growing variety of competing versions of Christianity and.

The original structure of priesthood leadership has disappeared. All that remain are city leaders still known as bishops But not called or supported by a central structure under the direction of prophets or apostles.

Now What I found interesting throughout this entire talk was the anachronistic assumption on the part of the Mormon speaker of the original idea that the original church was fun was Formed as the Mormon Church that you had a prophet and you had apostles and you had the priesthood.

This is just assumed never ever proven no evidence Presented whatsoever, and I've always felt that one of the weakest areas aside from its blatant polytheism and things like that one of the weakest areas in Mormon theology is this concept of the priesthood because the New Testament's teaching on priesthood is so clear it's so compelling and The Mormon perspective is just simply not there.

It's not what the New Testament teaches in any way shape or form and We have always found you know we have a priesthood track that we passed out up in Salt Lake City Especially to all the young alleged priesthood holders during the priesthood meetings on Saturdays and we've always found that going that direction and talking with Mormons on the subject of the priesthood has been extremely effective because Let's face it most Christians don't talk to him about that subject most Christians have no idea what the New Testament doctrine the priesthood is and so they It's it's it's not an area where they have pat answers already memorized and things like that and So over and over again, I would hear Dr.. Reynolds here Assuming Something that simply isn't in evidence and that is that the early church was formed as the Modern LDS Church is formed and that therefore when you begin to see the early Forms of the of the church in history, and it's different from Mormonism.

Well that that just must be a perversion and what struck me was Isn't that exactly what Muslims do. That's exactly what Muslims do. I Was I was gonna in fact I forgot to do this. But I was gonna queue up the the section from Shabir Ali in our debate in Biola in 2006.

Where I I said well, you know can you tell us? How can we tell what in the New Testament is still inspired? What is not in his responses well if it agrees with the Quran it is if it doesn't it's not and so the the parallel there's so many interesting parallels between Mormonism and Islam and They believe completely different things.

I've said in public places more than once That when you recognize that what you believe about God whether you're a monotheist or polytheist is the most fundamental defining factor of a religion the the chasm between monotheism and polytheism cannot be crossed and Given that that means that on that level Islam is closer to biblical Christianity than Mormonism is.

Because Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion I've ever encountered I'll never forget the long internet debate those actually wasn't in it as BBS debate. This is before the Internet with Eldon Watson remember that rich Eldon Watson that's there's a name we haven't heard in a while and We had this huge BBS exchange and for those of you who don't know what a BBS was that was a bulletin board system.

This was before the Internet became popular and people going wow Haitian old man isn't he? But anyway We had this lengthy conversation concerning the the reduction of the Islamic perspective. And that is if there's an increasing number of gods in the Islamic worldview.

Sorry, sorry Mormon worldview, but a little Mormon worldview don't get too confused here. I'll didn't. Watson's not a Muslim. He's a Mormon, but they both start with him so it gets confusing if there's an increasing number of gods in the Mormon worldview over time.

Then logically as you go back in time you're going to come to the first God and what was the first God? Before he was a God he had to have been a man well who created the first man well if he's the first God then you don't have a creator and so on so forth and Eldon Watson's argument was there is an Unlimited number of deities you cannot go backwards in infinity and eventually come to Anything other than infinity there's an infinite number of gods that makes Mormonism the most polytheistic religion you could possibly conceive of.

Because there is an unlimited number of deities and he he defended that idea. It's in fact. I think it's still in the Mormon section or at least part of my conversation with Watson on Matthew 16 I know that's up there the other one might be.

I don't know but anyhow, so the the parallels between Joseph Smith and Muhammad are very interesting very very interesting and Here you have the same result when you have a religion that comes along that in essence says Christianity blew it then you get some very interesting parallels between them and.

Both anachronistically take their scriptures and then make them the standard even though they come afterwards logically. They should be able to be tested for consistency. With the previous revelation, but no no just as the the Muslim looks at the Bible through the lens of the Quran.

The Mormon looks the Bible through the lens of the Book of Mormon. Dr. Comments program price if they've ever read the program price. And those revelations become prior more important and they become the basis upon which the Bible is to be in essence corrected and.

So I found that I found that fascinating the second thing that I heard. That should not have surprised me listen to this section from dr. Reynolds and see if this doesn't sound just a little bit familiar.

Nephi saw further that the devil's church took away many parts of the gospel including the covenants As verse 26 tells us and later took away many precious things out of the Bible verse 28. Now in the first century the Christian scriptures consisted principally of the Old Testament.

Available in a Greek translation called the Septuagint. A few years ago I had a personal experience that confirmed Nephi's account in a very dramatic way. I was a guest of the director of the Vatican Library in Rome and He brought out their 4th century copy of the Bible for me to see known as Codex Vaticanus B.

The first page view. Let me just mention its Codex Vaticanus which in the Nessie Olin designation system is B. It's not Vaticanus B. But hey, yeah, that's okay. I just think it stinks that a Mormon gets to see.

Had numerous erasures additions and changes written right on the page in different inks and in different hands. I Pointed to some of these and asked him what's that? He answered oh, that's where they make corrections.

I could tell that.

Over the last two decades. Now that's as far as he goes and I and talk about a very surface level discussion of Codex Vaticanus and the nature of textual emendation and la la la la la la, but hey, especially for Mormons, they have a long history of Going after the scriptures and that's what you're gonna hear that listen.

No sway says over the last two decades. This is 2004. So two decades since the 80s. What's been going on since the 80s?

Hmm listen. Many New Testament scholars have argued convincingly That the final text of the Gospels and the epistles that were eventually canonized as our New Testament Took shape during a long period in which they were modified as necessary necessary To support the emerging theological orthodoxy among the leaders of the Christian churches.

Their principal evidence comes from scriptural quotations in second century documents Quotations which are different than what we have today and Would not have supported the theological orthodoxy that emerges in the church in later centuries.

Now that's not actually and I remember he's a professor of political science. So I guess we can sort of give him a pass on that, but that's not actually the argumentation. But can you guess where he's getting that from?

Yeah, I can guess too. That's from Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman the cultists apostates and Muslims favorite scholar. What an amazing thing to hear that we need to take our break. We'll be right back with your phone calls right after this.

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And welcome back to the dividing line. Glad we survived survived the break. I'll fix that later. There you go. I guess that chewing gum finally finally gave in on that one. I Just love the high-end professionalism that we we We provide for there.

We set the standard that other people shoot for or shoot down at or something. I Just noticing a comment in channel. From the fellow we we had hoped someday he would write the wisdom of tired. But he never got around to it now.

He's married. So I'll never write anything again. So but he says. Corrections on a biblical manuscript self-destruct their inerrancy and yet they the Mormons can. Explain why interchanging white and pure and adding principle to the Book of Mormon and its introduction are minor inconsequential changes.

Very true. The standard for the Book of Mormon and the standard for the Bible are not the same. Thanks due to the eighth article of faith, of course, so that's just simply how how we should do that. You're putting that away and you bring it as you know, they're not gonna go there.

Okay good. That's fine. All right, let's go ahead and take our phone caller and then I've got something else that I want to address today. Let's talk with Jeff. Hi Jeff. How you doing?

Hi, dr. White great to talk to you again. Yes, sir. Yeah, it's kind of I think last time I called in late 2007. I was Wondering if you're ever gonna debate dr. Ahriman, so my Times has definitely changed and I'm really glad you did the debate.

And I wanted to kind of comment on a couple things from dr. Ahriman's Argumentation kind of get your comments on them. One was and I think a lot of people discuss the and you've discussed a lot the absolute certainty sort of criterion Dr. Ahriman, it seems to me I kept thinking about his issues with cetera interview where he basically where he said that yeah, we pretty much know what they said and his inconsistencies, but one of the things I was You're applying it to other texts, but I was thinking like if he'd fight his standard just everyday life There's no way I don't have absolute proof that I'm not a brain in a vat or for younger folks.

You know, I'm plugged into the matrix or something like that. So, I mean there you based on his standards, I don't think you could believe in anything. Well almost anything except like, you know, it's a car like you exist.

Yeah, I I think you're right. I I don't know that he'd go quite that far. I didn't push it that far. I do.

Think he's not consistent, right? Yeah, no that far but I mean if it was I think there's something in his life. Where and I. I mean, obviously I don't want to psychoanalyze them. But just based off of Romans one that there's something causing him like, okay.

If I have to if I have to accept the Bible or be consistent I will be consistent in a way that rejects the Bible. You know where he will reject pacifist or whatnot, you know, well, he's a good he's a good.

He's more and more influenced by post-modernism. I do think that we're seeing a more rapid evolution in ermine's Embracing his role as the chief critic of the New Testament Since dr. Metzger has passed.

I think there was a a personal relationship with their Metzger Never denied the faith, but he's gone now and I think you've seen a. I don't know that that ermine would have put out Jesus interrupted While ermine while Metzger was still alive, and so I think that's part of it.

But there's also he he himself admitted. He has changed his views in regards to even the propriety of addressing the concept of the original text Since he wrote the orthodox corruption of Scripture. So over the past decade and a half He's had a pretty major shift in his perspective at that point.

And so I think you put all that together and as you know, the the the only Certainty in a post-modern worldview is that there is no certainty. And so I think he's just being consistent at that point.

He but he's not consistent in that if there really isn't any certainty at all. Then his historical writings should be considerably more Nebulous than they are but he's not consistent at that point now.