Bassam Zawadi and Casting Crowns

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>>[music. Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is

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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.

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

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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

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

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James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning. We are going to be doing something

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I don't remember if I've ever done it before, I don't think I have, it's possible, but we've been doing

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The Dividing Line since sometime in the 1980s. We don't have all those going back there, but even since 1998,

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I don't remember everything I've done. Every time, once in a while, we turn on the audio before the program and the wayback machine's playing,

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I hear something going, oh, yeah, I hadn't thought about that forever, you know, and so, you know, I just don't remember those things, so I don't know if we have, but I'm actually going to be critiquing a song, a contemporary

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Christian song, actually, and so I'm going to give you just a little bit of a teaser here as to what the song is, maybe it sounds familiar to you.

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I'm not going to be critiquing the music because I think it's just fine, I don't have any problem with that, that's not the point.

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The point will be the message of the music, the message of the lyrics, yes, that's

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Casting Crowns, Jesus' Friend of Sinners is the song. We will be looking at that, but we're not going to look at it right now, because if we do that right now, then you won't listen to everything else

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I have to say after I'm done. That's called a teaser, which actually is completely irrelevant in podcasting.

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In broadcast, it works perfectly, because there's nothing you can do about it, but in a webcast, if someone's listening to us on iTunes, they're just going to grab that slider and rip it on down.

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You can't do teasers, it's like, whatever, but that's sort of how it works.

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But we'll be looking at that song and considering some of its ramifications, its teachings, its theology, and once again, as we always say, theology matters, and we will see that that's the case.

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But I need to get to a few other things. One thing, very, very, very, very quickly, you all saw the

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April Fool's yesterday, that sadly was so believable that it was hard to realize it was an

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April Fool's, and that was the charity boxing match between Rick Warren and Mark Driscoll.

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My money would have been on Driscoll anyways. I mean, Warren looks like he's pretty soft, and I think he would have been down in a second, but that was all in April Fool's.

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I wish this was an April Fool's. Todd Friel pointed this out, somebody pointed out to me on Twitter, but on Amazon you have a book,

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Catholics Come Home, God's Extraordinary Plan for Your Life by Tom Peterson, with a foreword by none other than our dear friend

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Scott Hahn, and with endorsements by people like Patrick Madrid and Peter Kreeft and Rick Warren.

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Yeah, seriously, you've got Hahn and Madrid and Kreeft, and then the mission of Tom Peterson and Catholics Come Home to bring souls home to Jesus and the

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Church is critically important during this challenging time in our history. I fully support this new evangelization project,

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Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life. Look it up, look up Catholics Come Home on Amazon, scroll down to the endorsements under Editorial Reviews, and you will find that from Rick Warren.

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Okay, I don't care what else you say. I don't care what else you say. That means

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Rick Warren has zero discernment. Absolutely, positively, none. None whatsoever.

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Don't tell me this man's read all of all of Jonathan Edwards. He has no discernment.

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This is the shepherd of the flock saying, hey wolves over here.

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It's amazing, absolutely amazing to me, but there it is. Of course, following right after Rick Warren, Catholics Come Home inspires each of us to share

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God's love with others in order to help change the world for the better for eternity. Roma Downey, actress and co -producer of the

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History Channel series The Bible, there you go, followed by then Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, who by the way recently said that the

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Church hasn't been too good at welcoming gays and lesbians. Well, that sort of leads us into other topics

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I don't want to get into quite yet, but we'll be thinking about what welcoming means, but I have some things

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I need to do here because we have many topics we address on The Dividing Line, and one of those topics is the subject of Islam.

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And I forget where I was going. It was one of my trips recently. I have so many. You know, I've got barely a week before I go to Hawaii.

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Tough thing to do. I will be speaking a number of times in Hawaii, and I guess my good friend

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Brother Shane, the pastor there, we really hit it off last time I was there, and he's a good man, and I won't go into his past like that.

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I think it's great, but not without his permission. Anyways, I'm going to be heading out there, and as the banner ad on the website says, it looks like he's gotten some support, and I'm really hoping that some other churches likewise will come along and will be a part of things.

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The Gospel Coalition Hawaii is part of things, but you know the tough thing is in Hawaii.

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You know, you're on an island, and there are other Christians on other islands. You know, when

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I was out there last year, I went to Hilo first, and then I went to Honolulu. It's not easy to get from one place to the other, you know?

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I mean, you got to pay for a plane or whatever, and then once you get there, you got to get transportation. It's not easy, so I don't know how many folks are going to be able to come out, but at least

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I hope the folks involved with the Gospel Coalition there in Honolulu will be there, and we've got some very interesting topics that Shane came up with.

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All branches of the same tree. So I'm going to be addressing a number of issues. Same gospel, same

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God, same sex, which I hope is still legal for me to discuss when I get to Hawaii.

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Not known as a bastion of conservatism, Hawaii isn't. Same book and same questions.

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I like that. So looking forward to being with that, but I've just been doing so much traveling that I lose track of which trip

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I was about to go on, but I know it was right before a flight. I very quickly posted something on the blog, which is going to become easier in the future to post things on the blog.

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I'm looking forward to that. Anyways, in response to Bassam Zawadi, because Bassam had posted an article rather broadly hinting at my alleged dishonesty.

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You know, I'd like to ask folks to realize that disagreement does not necessarily mean that the other person you're disagreeing with is dishonest.

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It might be an honest disagreement, and I know that Bassam did attempt to give an interpretation of Surah 5 during our debate in London.

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Okay. All right. I heard it. I don't think it made a lick of sense, but I heard it, and I'm sorry, but I want to address people like Bassam Zawadi and Abdullah Al -Andalusi and all the guys at MDI and Adnan Rashid and all the guys at IERA and all of you guys.

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First of all, you all know that I, when I debate you, attempt to show respect for you by studying your faith and by trying as best

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I can to accurately represent what it is you believe. And I'm trying to get to know some of you better than I have in the past so I can pray for you better.

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I think Adnan Rashid would agree with me that our second debate in Dublin was better than the first debate because we had gotten together between those two debates and had gotten to know each other better, and it made for,

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I think, I think it allowed us to focus more upon issues because there was more of a personal relationship between us.

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So I think those are good things and I want to pursue those things and, you know, so on and so forth.

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But you all need to hear I was very concerned,

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Bassam, with our debate primarily because, and I think the thing was very interesting to people that were there.

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This was at Trinity Road Chapel in London just a few years ago. I think most of people recognized by the end of the debate one of us was saying that surah five has one consistent message and one of us was saying that it doesn't and I was the one saying that you need to interpret surah five as a whole and you're the one saying you can't do that.

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And Bassam, you need to understand I understand that there are different forms of interpretation of the text of the

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Quran and I understand for a Sunni Muslim the Sunnah, the

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Hadith, the various schools of jurisprudence and interpretation are extremely important.

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You need to understand that as a Christian I look at the

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Quran and I see a book that is next to impossible to derive a single consistent message from given its nature and the fact that it is not rooted and grounded in history the way that the

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New Testament is. In other words, the exegetical methodology that I can utilize in interpreting

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Romans, in interpreting Galatians, in interpreting John or Matthew, in looking at the authors, in looking at their worldview, their language, their audience, events in that day.

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For example, you can't even begin to make heads or tails, I don't think, out of the book of Revelation if you don't know what's going on at that time in the early church.

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Or you're at least in far greater danger of making it say something the author never intended it to say if you don't have any idea what's going on contextually.

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As you know Bassam, for the vast majority of the text of the Quran you can't do that.

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You don't have that ability. You can look at the language but we don't know the historical background.

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And even many times when we think we know the historical background it's because a later writer, actually a later narrator of Hadith, said that somebody said that somebody said that somebody said that this came out.

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And as you know, there are a number of texts in the Quran where the Hadith contradicts itself as to what that text's historical context really was.

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For example, just think off the top of my head here, I hadn't really listed this out, but off the top of my head, I think this is reminding me, and I think

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Bassam and Adnan and Abdullah and all the rest of them will understand what I'm saying here. I am 28 minutes from finishing

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Malik's Muwatta. Now if any of you have ever read the Muwatta of Malik, you know what

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I have gone through over the past few weeks. I'm sorry, there are some interesting sections.

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It's one of the earliest collections of Hadith, but it is so filled with feek, with legal stuff.

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I mean, hours of discussions of percentages of grains, and you cannot sell a shipment of food if you only have the receipt, but you haven't actually received the food.

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And oh my goodness, it is just... you folks need to realize how difficult it is for folks on this side of the aisle to work through that kind of stuff.

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It really... labor of love, truly, truly is. But anyways, I'm just about done with it.

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So maybe this is what reminded me of this, but there are... in regards to the text that prohibits a person from...

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in trying to intercede for someone who commits shirk, in the Hadith you'll have, in the same section, one narrator saying this had to do with Muhammad's parents, and another saying that it had to do with his uncle,

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Abu Talib. Right? So the the Hadith are not consistent in answering what the actual background of that is.

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So the point is, we cannot utilize the same exegetical methodology. Or let's put it this way, if we use the same exegetical methodology, the

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New Testament is significantly easier to interpret and to place in a historical context and therefore to understand than the

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Quran is. Now with that in mind, you all don't seem to understand what

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I'm saying about Surah 547. You all just don't seem to be getting what it is that I'm saying.

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I do not believe, for a moment, that the author of the

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Quran had sufficient knowledge of the New Testament to even begin to address the issue. I don't think he knew that there were four

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Gospels. I don't think that he knew who Paul was, in the sense of knowing which letters he wrote and which ones he did not.

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I don't think he knew the message of the New Testament. I don't think he knew the centrality of the cross. I believe the author of the

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Quran was ignorant of 99 % of the content and form of the

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New Testament. Prove me wrong! Prove me wrong!

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Because you're the one making the positive assertion. Now I know that theologically the problem is, you can't deal with what

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Muhammad did or did not understand because to you that's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. Why is it irrelevant?

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It is irrelevant because Muhammad didn't have anything to do with the words of the Quran. The angel

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Jibril simply dictates them to him. He repeats them verbatim. What he understood, whether his understanding of, say, the trinity or Christian theology or the cross grew over time, all that stuff is irrelevant to the believing

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Sunni Muslim. Now I recognize in the West there might be those who can break out of that traditional type of understanding and actually start thinking about those things, but let's face it, that's a heretical viewpoint for the sake of most

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Sunni Muslims because the Quran is eternal and its author, it's the very words of Allah, and Allah understood all that stuff.

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But for some reason Allah didn't bother to put enough specificity into the text of the

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Quran to show any of us that he understood that stuff. And so I read

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Bassam's response to me and I go, you are assuming so many things. The first thing that you're assuming is that I am crediting the author of the

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Quran with a whole lot more than I am. All I'm saying is this, you are in the position of having to defend your text.

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You are in the position of having not just, you cannot simply assume the character of your text because your text specifically interacts with mine.

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If it just existed unto itself, if it didn't make the claims that it does, that Muhammad stands in a line of true prophets and that Jesus was a true prophet and that the

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Injil contains light and guidance and that Moses was one of the prophets and that the

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Torah contains light and guidance and there's even the one text that connects the Torah and the Quran together and says, you know, produce an ayah like either one of them and all the rest of it.

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If your text did not interact with ours, then you might be in a different position.

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But it does. It's the last kid on the block.

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And the New Testament writers understand what is in the Old Testament.

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They are reading the Old Testament. They are quoting the Old Testament. They're arguing from the

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Old Testament. Okay, so here's the situation.

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In surah 547 we are told, let the Alal Injil, the people of the gospel, judge by what

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Allah has revealed therein. Now, I was a little disappointed that Bassam went this direction because I was hoping for something a little bit more here, but I'm sorry, it is very difficult for me to have a lot of scholarly respect for the

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Muslim who says, well, the Quran says that the gospel, not gospels, were given to Jesus, not

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now, it's very common. I realize it's very common, but guys, I think if you're going to step forward and represent

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Islam in the 21st century, you've got to get out of 18th century

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Islamic argumentation. I'm not saying to abandon what you believe. What I'm saying is you need to start realizing that you have been assuming all sorts of things that you just can't assume.

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When you say, well, it says gospel. You have gospels. What is the assumption you're making?

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That the author of the Quran understands that we have gospels and that therefore there is a purposeful differentiation between the singular

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Injil and the plural. Where's your evidence for that?

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You know that today, but I say to Bassam, I say to Abdullah, I say to Adnan, you know much more about the

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New Testament than the author of your scriptures did, and that puts you in an amazing situation.

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And I feel for you in that situation. I really do. You are attempting to defend what

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I think is the indefensible. But the point is, where does the

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Quran show the first inkling of a recognition that the

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New Testament, which is what the Alal Injil have in their hands, are reading in their worship services, it would have been what they were carrying with them if and when the emissaries from Najran met with Muhammad toward the end of his life.

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Where does the Quran show any understanding of what was actually in that text?

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We know what was in that text. There is no question, textually, historically, it would have had

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John there. Those are the only first century gospels that we possess.

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The Gospel of Thomas is not a first century gospel. And even if some wild -eyed liberal scholars try to say, well, but some of the traditions go back to the first century, you can produce the text of the

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Gospel of Thomas solely by looking at the Synoptic Gospels and John, and then throwing some

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Valentinian Gnosticism in for the fun of it. There is absolutely no reason to believe at all that there is some independent text, textual tradition, or anything else that's being drawn from.

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You just don't have to go there. The only reason anybody does that, it's one simple reason, to sell books.

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That's it. That's the only reason. So we have four gospels.

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They've always been there. There's no question about them, canonically speaking. And the question is, where do we get from the

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Qur 'an, any understanding on the part of the author of the Qur 'an, that Jesus was given some book that's separate from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

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And what's more, you all don't live in accordance with that. You know why? If you want to make that argument, then any one of you makes the argument.

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But Psalm, if you're going to make this argument, then you should never, ever, ever, ever quote John 14 or 16, or Deuteronomy 18, or any other text in defense of the fulfillment of Surah 616 or 717 in regards to Muhammad being found in the text of the

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Bible. Because that wasn't what was given to Jesus, right? In fact, you shouldn't even try to defend the idea that Muhammad is prophesied in the

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Bible, if you really take this seriously. You shouldn't do it. But if you're going to sit there and quote the paraclete passages from John 14, then don't turn around and say, oh, but Jesus was given a different book that isn't

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Which one is it? Now, I'm trying as best

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I can, with a critical mind, but an honest mind, to listen to the early writers of Islam.

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I've spent a lot of time with Ibn Kathir, and once I get done with Sahih Muslim, and I don't have that much more to go, so I've got the

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Muwatta I finish off this afternoon, and I'm going back to Muslim from there, and I've got N .T.

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Wright stuff and everything else. I'm trying. But I'm going to try to find a way to get

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Ibn Kathir into mp3 format. That's not going to be easy to do, but I think it can be done.

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And I've spent a fair amount of time with Ibn Kathir and with al -Qurtubi and others of the early writers of Islam.

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And one thing, the conclusion I have right now, now I'm open to correction if there's stuff that I haven't seen, but I'll tell you right now,

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Bassam, my feeling right now is these men, my feeling right now is that Bassam Zawadi knows more about the content of the

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New Testament than Qurtubi and Ibn Kathir combined. Combined.

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The level of ignorance of the text of the Christian scriptures in the earliest writers of Islam is amazing and understandable.

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It's both amazing and understandable. In other words, it's really bad, they don't know it, but it's also completely understandable given the context in which they lived.

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So they weren't given accurate information from Muhammad. They weren't given accurate information from the Quran. You can't just assume the things you're assuming.

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You seem to think that what I'm saying is, in fact, let me, here's a quote from your thing.

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It says, seeing that Islamic tradition didn't shy away from mentioning Christian inquiries and objections to Islam, why then didn't they ask why the

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Quran denies the crucifixion despite the four Gospels attesting to it if in fact the Quran was attesting the textual incorruptibility of the four

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Gospels just as White asserts? I have never asserted that the Quran is attesting the textual incorruptibility of the four

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Gospels. What I'm saying is, you cannot interpret your text in light of the later development of that accusation and make heads or tails out of texts like Surah 547.

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How can a Christian fulfill the command of Surah 547? If what you're telling me is the only way you can do this is by becoming a

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Muslim, then you're not the Al -Anjil anymore, are you? I'm sorry, that's not what it means.

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That's not a contextual reading at all. I think I'm pretty good at recognizing acontextual readings even when it's a

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Muslim acontextually reading Muslim sources and that's what you're doing. I don't think the author of the

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Quran had any idea of textual criticism or anything of the kind. But you see, you guys assume so much and you don't recognize that you can't assume those things.

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Now I know there are Christians do the same thing, but Christian apologists shouldn't be doing that. And when

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I talk about a text of Scripture, as you all well know, because a number of you I've challenged on this very point, if I'm going to bring it up, if you want to object to it textually,

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I'm ready to go to town on it. I'm ready to go. Let's talk about it.

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Just today, OliveTree Bible software. I use two, I use three primary programs.

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OliveTree, Accordance is my primary and Logos. And OliveTree dropped the

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NA28 today. And what did I do? I immediately got it. Had to. I have to have that stuff.

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I know I have to have that stuff. I can't have somebody else in the debate having that and I don't have it. That's already on my iPad.

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It's gonna be on my computers. Accordance says their version's coming out later in the month. I'll have that as well. And it's not like it's a big deal.

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I mean, they only changed a few places in the Catholic epistles, the pastoral epistles, and stuff like that. They didn't really do much there, but the textual critical material has been updated.

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There are new papyri that are cited, things like that. So had to do it. So I'm ready to go. I'm not hiding the fact they're textual variation in the

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New Testament. I'm ready to go to town on it. Let's talk about it. So I'm not doing what, unfortunately, you guys are doing.

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You are making assumptions that given the fact that your Scripture comes last, historically.

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I know you can think it came from eternity past, but it interacts with ours and historically it came on the scene over half a millennium after the writing of the

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New Testament. And therefore, there are certain things that you have to be able to back up, and you guys aren't even trying.

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You're just assuming things. What I'm saying to you is that give me a contextual drawn.

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When I say contextual, I mean drawn from the actual flow of the text.

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Now, if you're just going to come up and say, you know what, you can't do that with the

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Quran. There is no meaning from the text. It is not Mubinun. We have to depend upon the

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Hadith. And, you know, if you just want to just throw your hands up and say that, okay, fine.

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But if you're going to affirm what the Quran says about itself, that it doesn't depend upon previous sources when there's great evidence that it does.

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You're going to say that it's Mubinun. It's clear when it's not without stuff that wasn't even collected for decades, centuries afterwards.

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Look, you've got to deal with your text as it stands. And you can't just keep assuming these things.

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I think I can start in Surah 544 and walk through this text and give you, based on the original language,

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I've worked through it myself. I ain't no expert, but I've worked through this myself.

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I could give you a contextual, fair interpretation. Now, the problem is, you all are like Roman Catholics.

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You really are. You're like Roman Catholics. Because I'll do that with Roman Catholic. I'll walk through Romans 4 and 5.

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I'll get to Romans 5 .1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And I can talk about the textual variant, the subjunctive, and ecumen versus ecumen. I can do all the rest of that stuff.

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We can talk about it. And the Roman Catholic comes back and says, well, who are you to think you can interpret

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God's Word? You need God's church. You need the early church fathers. Well, the problem is, the early church fathers are not a unanimous group.

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And neither is the Ahadith. Neither is the Ahadith. I've been spending hours in that literature.

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And you know, as well as I know, that the whole reason you have all these different groups of interpretations is because it's not a consistent body of material.

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I mean, even utilizing the rules that Hadith scholars utilize, which are sometimes circular, which help to filter things out.

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Even with that, even what you have left in the traditional collections of Bukhari and Muslim and Termite and Ibn Majd and all the rest of that stuff, you put all together, it is not consistent.

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That's why there's all sorts of arguments. That's why there's all sorts of different groups. You know that. So you have an inconsistent body of material that becomes the only way you can interpret the

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Quran. So my point is, guys, give me an interpretation that's not just, well, you know,

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Ibn Kathir said this. Or al -Khattabi said this. Or this, you know, it was narrated that Abdullah ibn

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Masud said this. Okay, you can do that. But how about deriving it from the text itself?

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In fact, think about it. What does it mean that a

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Christian can sit out here and give a better contextual reading of the Quran than you are forced to give because of your external sources?

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That's why I say you're like the Roman Catholics. That's what they do. They're not deriving it from the text. They're deriving it from their sources outside the text.

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And they just form the text into whatever those external sources say. That's what you're doing. Who's really respecting the

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Quran there, really, when you think about it? So you just can't assume these things, guys.

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You have to prove them. So I hear what you're saying. Well, James, you're not interpreting this in accordance with my particular set of interpretations.

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Okay, show me that your set of particular interpretations actually represent the intention of the original author, not someone who comes later.

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Well, you can't really go there because those who came later were the best generation, and they were the ones taught by Muhammad. And I've been there, done that, got the t -shirt.

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I've seen what it's done in Roman Catholicism, and I've seen what it's done in Islam. And guess what, guys? It doesn't give you unity, does it?

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Think about it. So what I am saying, Bassam, is not that the

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Quran attests the textual incorruptibility of the four Gospels. What I'm saying is, the author who wrote

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Surah 547 meant something when he penned the words.

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It had a meaning at that time. And if you address those words to the

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Christians of Muhammad's day, we know what the Injil was to them.

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And when we judge by that Injil, we have to reject Muhammad because he does not know what the

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Injil contains. This theory that you want to come up with of a book no one's ever found, given to Jesus alone,

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I have one challenge for you. Show it to me. Prove it. You can't.

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It makes just as much sense as denying the reality of the crucifixion based upon 40 Arabic words that rip and shred all of history.

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All of history. All right. Want to shift gears?

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Put the clutch all the way in. Almost need a musical interlude, but it's a musical anyways.

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So I guess we'll have a musical interlude. I'll be honest, I had never heard this song before.

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I had never heard this song before this morning. And I saw the song referenced in an

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Janet Mefford's producer sent to me before I was on the Mefford show yesterday.

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By the way, my schedule is going to become even busier over the next few months.

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Your prayers and support are appreciated. Bethany House has sent out the publicity stuff and I've already scheduled three hours worth of interviews just this morning on the new book.

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So generally don't do that until the book's going to be getting ready to ship here pretty soon.

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And I'm really, really, really hoping... I know they're talking May 1st, but that's normally... I think we're going to see it before then.

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I still hope for as early as... I really shouldn't be looking at TweetDeck.

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But anyway, was there something you wish to wish to throw in here? Well, I was just going to say I've heard the song before.

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It gets a lot of play. Does it? Yeah. I don't listen to CCM. Yeah, it gets a lot of play.

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And so I tend to let it go by for various reasons, but I'm not going to jump ahead of things.

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Right, right. Well, I recognize that taking the position that I've taken and standing on the convictions that are mine, that I am spelling certain disaster for this ministry in the future.

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And let's just be honest. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, do what

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David Wood did with his cell phone last night. Yeah, boom. Classic, absolutely classic video.

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I tweeted it. I didn't blog it. But if you haven't seen

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David Wood's video, When a Jihadi Calls or something like that, you've got to go find it.

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You've got to go find it. Okay. Congratulations, David. That's one of the best videos you've ever done.

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And you said almost nothing in the entire video. You know, the thing is, had I seen that two days ago,

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I think I could do a decent impression of Sadiq Abdul -Malik. Yes.

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Okay. And we could have had some fun. We really could have. It was classic.

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It was great. It really, really was. But anyway, I don't know how I mentioned that, but anyway,

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Casting Crowns, Jesus, Friend of Sinners. When I say that I'm destining my ministry for even rougher times in the future, if young evangelicals represent, are in line with their generation, well, we ain't gonna be very popular, except with those who are really serious about their faith.

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Really serious about their faith. And I already know that there are some of them out there, and we pray for you.

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And I am reminded of a song from my generation. There was a song by Steve Green, beautiful song.

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And it was, the message was, let us be found faithful for those who come after us, that we might give to them an example, that we might be guides to them by how we lived our lives.

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And that's why I want to, along with Vicki and channel, finish well, stay strong.

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And that's what we're trying to do. Anyway, I think this song represents what's going wrong with evangelicalism.

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So I'm gonna play it. I want you to listen carefully, and then we'll go through it.

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Listen carefully to the words. There's one point of obvious theological whoops, but it's the foundational assumptions that have been bought into by the author of this song that we absolutely must challenge and respond to.

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Let's listen in. Jesus, friend of sinners, we have strayed so far away.

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We cut down people in your name, but the sword was never ours to sway.

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Jesus, friend of sinners, the truth's become so hard to see.

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The world is on their way to you, but they're tripping over me.

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Always looking around, but never looking up. I'm so double -minded.

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A blank -eyed saint with dirty hands and a heart divided.

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Oh, Jesus, friend of sinners, open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers.

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Let our hearts be led by mercy.

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Help us reach with open hearts and open doors. Oh, Jesus, friend of sinners, break our hearts for what breaks yours.

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Jesus, friend of sinners, the one who's riding in the sand.

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May the righteous turn away and the stones fall from their hands.

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Help us to remember we are all the least of thieves.

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Let the memory of your mercy bring your people to their knees.

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Nobody knows what we're for, only what we're against when we judge the wounded.

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What if we put down our signs, crossed over the lines, and loved like you did?

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Oh, Jesus, friend of sinners, open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers.

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Let our hearts be led by mercy.

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Help us reach with open hearts and open doors.

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Oh, Jesus, friend of sinners, break our hearts for what breaks yours.

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Lost cause, you reach for the outcast.

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For the leper and the lame that you came.

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Lord, I was that lost cause. I was a faithful sinner just like me.

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A grateful leper at your feet. Cause you are good.

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You are good. And you're loved.

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Okay, the rest is repetitious. It's just, you are good, you are good, you're loved, and you're forever. It's when everyone's supposed to start swinging and pulling their phones up and stuff like that,

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I guess. I don't know. Okay. Hopefully, and this is where I disconnect, unfortunately, from a lot of folks.

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Though I would like to try to encourage my young listeners to move beyond being ruled by your emotions.

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Emotions are wonderful things. I happen to not be an enemy of all contemporary

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Christian music, by the way, either. Even though all we sing is the Trinity Hymnal at our church.

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I would have no problem whatsoever with a number of songs that have been written since the 1800s.

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Or the 1900s, for that matter. I was just mentioning in channel, I listened to Keith Green when

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Keith Green was still alive. And there are songs I sang in a Christian group at North Phoenix Baptist Church.

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We competed in, you can check the records, we competed in and won the small group competition at the

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Estes Park, the big Estes Park Christian music festival in the summer of 1981.

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A group called Liberation. You can go back and check. I sang bass, yes I did. And I enjoyed it.

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Some of the most important, formative times in my life. So I'm not picking on that.

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My concern is the meaning of the words. Jesus, friend of sinners, we have strayed so far away.

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We cut down people in your name, but the sword was never ours to swing. What does that mean?

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It talks about, open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers. Now if all this is talking about is that there are some people who call themselves

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Christians, who are utter hypocrites, and who point their fingers at others as a means of covering over their own sin, are unrepentant sinners themselves, okay fine, but I don't think that's what it's saying.

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One thing I didn't hear in this song was anything about repentance. And the picture of Jesus, very, very concerning to me.

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We cut down people in your name. I have been told that when

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I say that Roman Catholicism does not possess the gospel, I'm cutting people down. If you can't see the difference between the statement, that Roman Catholicism does not contain the gospel, and quote unquote, cutting someone down, then you are not thinking rationally, you are not thinking logically, you're not thinking as a mature human being.

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Now we live in a day, where what was common on the playground when

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I was in third grade, has now become common in the halls of Congress. We live in an immature society, where offense is the greatest sin.

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Where everything is interpreted in touchy, feely, emotional ways, rather than considering the actual truth claims being made.

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So when I hear someone say, we cut down people in your name, but the sword was never ours to swing.

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I've had that used against me over and over again, when I'm simply saying, God has said this is the way of life, and that is the way of death.

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And if that's the case, then I say especially to young Christians, apply these standards to the word of God.

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And tell me, if the psalmist is guilty of this, tell me if the writer of Proverbs is guilty of this, tell me if Isaiah is guilty of this, and most of all, tell me that when the first words out of Jesus' mouth in his public ministry were repent and believe, was

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Jesus guilty of this? Ironically, the only story that's told here was the non -canonical story of the pericope adultery from John 7 .53

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to 8 .11. Why not bring up the ones where Jesus says, go and sin no more?

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Jesus, friend of sinners, the truth becomes so hard to see. The world is on their way to you, but they're tripping over me.

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Excuse me? The world is on its way to Jesus? Really?

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Where did you get that from the Bible? Where did you get that message from Scripture?

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The world is not on its way to Jesus. The world may be on its way to Jesus' light, to Jesus' modern version, to Jesus fill -in -the -blank, but to the

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Jesus of the Bible? No. The world is on their way away from you, and I hope they'll trip over me might be a better line.

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But you see, if I'm going with them, if I'm crossing the lines and going with them and going with the flow, they're not going to trip over me because I'm running with them.

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A plank -eyed saint with dirty hands and a heart divided. Again, if all they're talking about is being a

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Christian who is simply hypocritical, does not see that I've been saved by grace, but that's not what they're talking about.

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Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers. Well, you know, there's truth to that statement.

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Any Christian, for example, who speaks on the subject of homosexuality and does so not recognizing your own broken sexuality, your own sexual sin, shame on you.

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If you haven't thought through the positive message of why real marriage established by God is valuable and precious and worthy of being defended, if the only reason you're doing what you're doing is because you don't like homosexuals, then you're wrong.

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But I don't think that's what this song's about. So when you talk about, again, nobody knows what we're for.

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Nobody knows what we're for, only what we're against when we judge the wounded.

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The wounded. Who's the wounded? And this, folks, is where I'm going to make people angry when

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I say this, but we have coddled a false gospel in our midst for so long and now we are reaping the result.

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The anti -lordship, no repentance, false gospel is a heresy.

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It has always been a heresy but we coddle it and we allow it and now we see what it results in because the entire background, the thinking of this song is that Jesus, well, he just loved sinners.

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Think for a moment. Jesus dined with sinners. He spent time with sinners.

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And what did they do as a result?

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What did they do? Think! Did he leave them in their sin?

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No, they repented. And what broke the heart of the

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Son of God was the presence of sin and death and he called people to repent and believe and escape from that.

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He never, ever said to any sinner, you're just fine where you are.

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Don't worry about repentance. God's law will change to fit your desires. And that's what we have today, my friends.

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We have people who want to stand up and say to God, I like this Jesus fellow as long as he will not apply your law.

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As long as he does not call for repentance. And that's not the

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Jesus of the Bible. Who's the wounded one?

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The wounded one, according to scripture, is the one who knows his sin and is repentant before God.

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That's the wounded one. Nobody knows what we're for, only what we're against.

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In other words, you've bought, the author of this has bought, hook, line and sinker the world's attack upon us.

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That's what the world says. The world doesn't give us time. The world's not beating down my door.

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I'm an author. I've written on this subject. I've debated some of the leading people on this subject. They don't want me.

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They don't want to hear the other side. They don't want to give me time to talk about the positive teaching of Matthew 19 and what

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Jesus said about marriage. They don't want to do that. They love to paint in this way.

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Oh, you're just known for what you're against. That, again, is absolute absurdity.

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It is poisoning the well. It's irrational. It's untrue. It's letting the other side define the categories.

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It says, what if we put down our signs crossed over the lines and loved like you did? Hmm, Jesus crossed over the lines?

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Well, yeah, he ate with sinners. And what did he do? He called them to repent. Remember a little guy, literally named

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Zacchaeus? What do you think Jesus was talking about in his house? We don't have any discussion.

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We don't have any recording of what was said in Zacchaeus' house. But we do know what

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Zacchaeus did. And I guess if this is true, Jesus said, Zacchaeus, you don't get it.

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Stay where you are. I've crossed over the lines. I'm loving you where you are. Now Zacchaeus recognized that in the presence of holiness there is an absolute demanded response.

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And so it seems that there is in the modern mindset of young evangelicalism, because the holiness of God is not preached

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Oh, we might sing about it once a while, but that's not the same thing as preaching it. If you can sing a song about the holiness of God, and yet then go out and not hate your sin, you were wasting your breath.

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Wasting your breath. God isn't interested in that kind of worship. He doesn't want it.

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Keep it to yourself. Go to a football game, basketball game, whatever. Don't stink up God's nostrils, that kind of stuff.

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Because the holiness of God and His law, the fact that He's our creator, He defines what is truth for us has been lost.

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It's not there anymore because that would require repentance and all that stuff, and holiness of God, we don't want any of that.

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Because of that, this kind of stuff can be presented, and you're presented with a

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Jesus who's schizophrenic. I don't know how young people could understand the biblical truth about who

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Christ is and what He did if you think that Jesus would have been sitting back allowing for the profaning of marriage, allowing for the destruction of human life.

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D. A. Carson pointed something out. I was listening to his book

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Scandalous on a ride last week. And he pointed something out. In John chapter 11, when in the midst of the

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Lazarus story, when it says that Jesus was, in English translations and what really, this is why it caught my attention, in English translations he says, every

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English translation misses it. And he said, I looked it up in the German translations, every German translation got it right.

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Being deeply moved. It's right before John 11, 35. I think it's 33 or 34.

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I don't have the text in front of me. Being deeply moved. He says, that's not what the word means.

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Look it up in any lexicon. He was angry. He was angry. The view of Jesus today is, well, it's the

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Jesus carrying the lamb, long hair, knocking on the door without the knob, and all the rest of this stuff.

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The idea of the Jesus, who says, I must go to the cross because there has to be a sacrifice for sins, because God's law can't simply be trampled into us.

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There has to be redemption. There has to be justice. We're uncomfortable with that Jesus.

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Very, very uncomfortable with that Jesus. We put down our signs, crossed over the lines, and loved like you did.

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How did he love? First, he loved God. He loved the Father, supremely and totally.

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And by his very sacrifice he vindicated, justified God. Remember Paul?

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Justification of God? God can't just look over sin. His law must be fulfilled.

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And to love like Jesus means you must honor God's law. And Jesus did not put any human being above the purposes of God.

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Not once. Jesus never loosed the law in the way that people do today, saying, well, we can grade on a curve.

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But this is the voice of the next generation. And unfortunately, we are warned in the pastoral epistles that men will heap up for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires.

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Now again, don't get me wrong. Christ builds his church.

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And the same Holy Spirit of God that has caused all of us if you're standing with me in this to stand and to be committed to continuing to stand will continue to build his church.

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And that same Spirit of God is at work amongst young people and there are good, solid, young believers stepping in to do what is right.

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But they are going to have a very tough time. They're going to have a lot of resistance.

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And you know what? As a result, they may be much more clear thinking and clear living and clear preaching and teaching than we have been.

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Because we have been so easily distracted by all the little things of the world.

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The world is on their way to you but they're tripping over me. No, I don't think so. The idea should be the world is on their way away from you but we, because of our love for Christ and our love for his

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Gospel we're willing to be tripped over because we won't go with the crowd.

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We won't go with the flow. We'll stand against it. Thanks for listening to The Voting Line today.

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Lord willing, be here on Thursday. See you then, God bless. ...

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