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It is an honor to be with you this evening. I thank all of you for coming out, especially those of you who have traveled a good distance. I hope that the encounter that you watch this evening and listen to will be a beginning for you.
Debates are far too short for them to be a finish line, but it is my desire in debates to cause people to hear the issues, especially two issues side-by-side where there's interaction, and as a result, begin a study on your own.
Check out what is being said. Don't let what you hear this evening be the last that you examine the presentations that are made this evening. Now, I must confess that when the debate topic first began to be discussed, and accusations of the corruption of the New Testament and things like that were the original background, that I did not expect the presentation that we just had, at least in total.
As you can see from what is on the screen, I did anticipate some of it, because another study would be making reference to Bart Ehrman. If those of you don't know who Bart Ehrman is, Bart Ehrman is a former Christian, graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Wheaton College, went to Princeton, and over the issue of suffering, lost his faith shortly after graduating from Princeton, and he and I will be debating the issue of the textual transmission of the New Testament in January of next year in Fort Lauderdale.
But what was just presented, I have been asked to give some evidence to substantiate something that quite honestly just isn't true. There is no such thing as a Pauline Church. There never was such thing as a Pauline Church.
The Apostles worked as a group. They frequently, as the New Testament documents demonstrate, ministered in the same areas, and therefore you had instances where Paul would preach in a place, but Peter likewise would preach in a place, and it wasn't just a Pauline Church versus some other church.
So I'm not going to give you any evidence to back up the idea that was presented, and that is the New Testament is the production of what's simply called the Pauline Church, because it's not true. What I'd rather present to you is, very, very briefly toward the end of that opening statement, Mr. Ahmed made reference, for example, to other churches.
I think what he means by that, and I have the book, Lost Christianities, here, is the fact that in much of academia today, as long as anyone mentions Jesus, they're called a Christian. So, for example, we had the Gnostic Gospels, and I thought maybe Nader was going to read from the Gospel of Thomas, or something like that.
And so we have the Gnostic Gospels being presented to us. And so I'd like to just give you an idea of why I find even trying to parallel Gnosticism with the New Testament so problematic. We're told there are all sorts of Gospels.
There's the Ebionite Gospel, and the Gospel of Thomas, and things like that. And there are many Gospels, but when were they written? Who produced them? Did they come from the first century context of Jesus?
The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is one that has Valentinian Gnosticism within its pages. Valentinianism did not flourish until the middle of the second century in Rome. It does not represent what's going on in first century Jerusalem.
The Ebionite Gospel in the same way. Does this come from the milieu of the New Testament, the same time period as the New Testament? How many of these alleged Gospels have a worldview that's consistent with that which Jesus would have had as a first century Palestinian Jew?
Almost none of them, found in Nag Hammadi, any of those places, actually would be relevant to the first century context that we have for the Lord Jesus Christ. We are told, for example, that early Christianity was splintered.
Just because one stream, I guess it's going to be called the Pauline Stream 1, means nothing. The implication being that one dominant group is better. God would never allow disputed ascension. But this wasn't even the case during the days of Jesus.
Not only were there different groups of Jews. We know the Pharisees, Sadducees, the Essenes, et cetera, et cetera. But even during the days of Jesus and the Apostles themselves, there were many divisions that took place.
Just as there are many divisions amongst many religions to this very day. That hardly is relevant to the idea of establishment of the truth. But notice, Gnostic Gospels, Gnostic texts, Nag Hammadi, Gospel of Thomas, I wrote this before the presentation.
What are some of the general Gnostic beliefs that would make these either relevant or irrelevant to us? And especially to my Muslim friends today. If you're going to look at these things, it's that they're irrelevant to the subject of the New Testament.
May I simply ask you, we're all monotheists. We believe God is the creator of heaven and earth. The Gnostics did not believe that. In fact, they believed that any creator of the heaven and earth would have to be evil.
They would have to identify Allah, or Yahweh, as an evil God, as most of the Gnostic groups did. And this is where they're coming from. This somehow has something to do with the reliability of the New Testament.
I can't possibly see how. They violated monotheism. They were dualists, meaning they felt that the physical universe was evil, and that which was spiritual was good. These are the same places where you get the stories about Jesus not dying on the cross.
Because if Jesus was truly good, how could he die upon a cross? Because he didn't have a physical body. You see, Muslims and Christians together agreed Jesus had a physical body. The Gnostics said no, because they're philosophical dualists.
A very, a completely different worldview than that which Muslims and Christians would have in regards to creation. They called God a demiurge, a lesser divine being, if he created this world. And, of course, they had a denigration of the physical world, marriage, creation.
Completely different perspective than what we have in the Old and New Testaments. Now, I think we could all agree. Could we not? And I am, I am this evening debating in the context of Christians and Muslims.
If you're a secularist, I would have a different presentation for you, because we have a different presuppositional issue that we need to deal with. But if you're here this evening as a Christian, or you're here this evening as a Muslim, then we have certain things we share together in our worldview.
And you have a holy book that talks about the books that were sent down before. And you are called to believe in the books that were sent down before. They're called the Taurat and the Injil. Now, if in A .D. 620-ish or so, you can have a command from Muhammad to believe in the books that had been sent down before, what books are we talking about?
Can we identify them? Can you as a Muslim continue to obey the command that you find in Surah 2 of Al-Baqarah? You find it in Surah 4. Can you continue to believe that? And is there a consistent basis upon which a Muslim would deny the inspiration of the text of the New Testament?
For example, Mr. Achmed has said, well, where's the evidence that Paul was a prophet? Well, he didn't really use that specific terminology. The normal term we use is not so much razzul as it is an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Well, isn't it interesting that those who were apostles of Jesus Christ, and since they are mentioned in the Quran, they had to have existed, yes? Where is the evidence that they ever opposed Paul? Where is the evidence that they fought against this Pauline Christianity?
Where are their books? Are we going to actually try to call the Ebionites the original followers of Jesus? Or are we going to try to make that kind of historical connection somehow? Where is the evidence that these apostles, and obviously, from an Islamic perspective, you have to believe that the next generation can be faithful to the original generation, because you believe that the Qur 'an and those who were the first generation of Muslims were faithful to the message of Muhammad.
Upon what basis would you ever believe that the first generation of Christians were unfaithful to the message of Jesus? I mean, let's just be fair. If we're going to evaluate things fairly, then that's what we need to do.
The New Testament is very honest in revealing for us the apostle Paul was a persecutor of the Christians. The New Testament is very honest in recording for us, not in Paul's writings, but in Luke's writings, that the early believers were afraid of Paul when he had his conversion experience.
They didn't even want to meet with him. They hid from him. Years later, he speaks about his sorrow at having caused the death of his fellow believers. Now those are the things that I think most people would have tried to gloss over if they were trying to create their own religion, don't you think?
The apostle Paul was open about these things because he was a trophy of grace. He had been changed. He had been converted. So you have him then meeting with Peter, with James. You have constant communication between the churches.
You don't have Paul churches and Peter churches. Now do you have conflicts between those in Jerusalem and those outside of Jerusalem? You do. But that's because that's an issue of Judaism and some people thinking everyone has to become a Jew before they can become a Christian.
That wasn't just a difference. That had nothing to do about who Jesus was. It had nothing to do with the cross. It had nothing to do with resurrection in any way, shape, or form. And so when you say, what's the evidence that Paul was an apostle?
It's the entire early church. There is no evidence to counterman his claims. Instead you have the epistles of Peter recognizing his words of scripture. And the only way you can get around that is to buy into the liberal perspective and say, well, Peter didn't write that.
And well, and then we've got this, well, Paul didn't write that. Or Luke didn't write that. Or, you know, whatever evidence you want to present, you'll find somebody to say, well, he didn't write that.
And then when you start digging into it, well, why do you feel he did not write that?
