Mark Siljander's Insider Movement Promoting Book

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

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

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

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

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

James White. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon.

Got a lot to cover today, I have been sent I don't know how many emails to answer today on the program and some of them take a little more time than others.

But first and foremost, I want to, as I have announced on Twitter, address the issue of a book called

A Deadly Misunderstanding by Ambassador Mark Silgender, former

Congressman Mark Silgender. And I'm going to be looking at that as quickly as we can possibly get to it.

And I also want to mention that I am going to start responding to some material.

I had a father send me an email about, well, one of the tens of thousands of atheists in your face.

I teach at a community college and I hate God people out there. You all know, some of you may recall that my own daughter ran into such a person as a freshman,

Dr. Carter at Glendale Community College. And all these folks

I have found to be not only less impersonal but very brave in front of a class of 18 -year -olds but not nearly as brave when challenged by someone who knows what they're talking about.

But anyways, I was sent a request for some assistance in light of some materials that were basically being force -fed to the students.

And the types of objections and arguments are just so common, they're not very good, but we're going to go ahead and take a look at them.

And I'll do that after we look at the Mark Silgender material. So why in the world should you care about Mark Silgender and his book

A Deadly Misunderstanding? Well, I was sent an email and I don't know how long ago it was.

It came through, somehow it made it through the

PIRSA filter, which is not easy to pierce the PIRSA filter, as one of our callers found out, in fact.

Anyway, and basically it referred me to the book and said,

I'm hearing people quoting this book a lot and have you written anything in response to it?

And I had not seen the book. And so I did what I often do,

I looked it up and, you know, it did look interesting. Around the same time period, somewhere right around there,

I also saw the new book, A Law, A Christian Response. And thankfully, both of them were available in Kindle format.

And so I purchased both of them. And by the way, when you support this ministry, you help that to continue to happen.

And immediately, overnight, recorded them to MP3 format, put them on the iPod, and put them into the rotation of things to be read, i .e.

listened to during long bike rides, which is how

I do dividing line preparation, debate preparation, etc., etc.,

etc., combine the two together and it's a wonderful thing to be able to do. So I started listening to it right after I finished the

A Law, A Christian Response book a week ago yesterday. And I got a certain distance into it.

And then sometimes you have to stop. For example, yesterday when I was riding and I finished, almost finished listening to this particular book,

I had to stop because I was going downhill into a wind. The volume just wasn't enough. I haven't found earplugs, earphones yet that get rid of all the wind noise.

I haven't tried noise cancelling ones yet because I want to be able to hear the truck coming up behind me. So I haven't decided to go there yet.

Anyway, so I started listening to it and the first thing that struck me, it's funny how

I always remember right where I am when I'm listening to these things. I was climbing Rio Verde Hill, which is also known as Nine Mile Hill.

It's a hill that's nine miles long. And I'm listening to, you know, how is this guy who is a former congressman going to get

Christianity and Islam? He wants to build bridges between Christianity and Islam. How's he going to do it? It was an interesting book, by the way, because he has traveled all over the world and he's met a lot of interesting people.

And it's fairly well written in that it's interesting to listen to and to read. But as soon as I started hearing him go for the

Aramaic excuse, that is all of a sudden, well, you know, a lot of people feel like the

New Testament is rigidly written in Aramaic and Jesus spoke Aramaic. And so when we look at the Aramaic, we can figure all this stuff out. Well, you know,

I've heard this one a thousand times before. When you can't find it in the canonical scriptures, you go for something else.

And Lamza's work has been used by about every self -starting cult group for the past 50 years.

And I was like, oh, this isn't going to be nearly, I mean, at least a lot of Christian response is written by, you know, comes from a scholarly perspective and you have to sort of deal with it a little bit more seriously.

And so I hadn't gotten back to it until a very long ride yesterday when I got back to it and finally got into the theological element of the book.

The whole reason that I'm doing this introduction is the reason I went to this book was because I had a request from someone and it was totally theological.

That is, here is a book that attempts to say that there are more connections between Islam and Christianity than we might imagine, that we have misunderstood.

And many of the things that Souljander says we've misunderstood are based upon his rather unique reconstructions of Aramaic.

Fundamentally what you end up with in Souljander's book is neither Christianity nor Islam. The presentation made of Islam and its beliefs becomes significantly less

Islamic than the scholars that I listen to regularly from the

Islamic side. And of course the Christian side, even though he claims to have come from an evangelical background, doesn't use that terminology of himself anymore, which

I can certainly understand, is considerably less than biblical Christianity as well. And that's the problem.

When you try to bend two religions close enough to where you can start building bridges between them, very frequently what you're building bridges between isn't really the

Christian faith any longer anymore. Anyways, and whatever the other religion is, isn't recognizable by its adherents either.

But the whole reason was to listen to these types of arguments because basically what these people are saying is what

I'm doing is wrong. What we're doing in Respond to Islam, what

I'm doing in writing on Islam right now, and engaging Shabir Ali and Bassam Zawadi and Abdullah Al -Andalusi and all these people,

Abdullah Kunda, in debate, no, no, no, we're not supposed to be debating. We're supposed to be building bridges.

And this book's idea is that the bridge that you can find is the teachings of Jesus.

Well, okay, some of the teachings of Jesus. It's a very edited group of the teachings of Jesus.

That's tough about the eternal Son of God and centrality of the cross and sacrifice for sins and stuff like that.

That needs to be left off to the side. But, you know, the Sermon on the Mount, you know, that kind of stuff, we can build bridges based upon that.

And that we do not need to look to convert anyone. The discussion of conversion was incredibly surface level, very, very poor.

It really makes you really honestly question Mark Zilgender's background as to his understanding of what the

Christian faith was or is, because there's some huge gaping blind spots. But what's amazing is that as you get farther into the book, what you discover is he's met with all sorts of people and claims to have talked to all sorts of scholars.

And you would think somebody somewhere along the line would have said, you know, this Sonship of Jesus thing, you do realize that Christians believe that's an eternal thing, that the

Son has eternally existed as the Son, as a divine person, not just a divinized spirit that indwelt

Jesus, but that there is this divine person, the second person of the Trinity called the

Son, who eternally existed, through whom all things are made, you know, Colossians chapter one, things like that. But that doesn't seem to really enter in.

So I got back, it was a long ride, it was over 80 miles, so I got back. And I wanted to try to finish off,

I could tell I was getting close. And so if you're familiar with how iPods work,

I have the book file on my Mac and on my iPod. So I just went ahead and I hadn't hooked the iPod back up, so it hadn't updated where I was in the book file, the audio book file.

So I was looking around for where I was. And the first place I clicked in iTunes, saying,

I think I might be somewhere around here, you know, I'm not sure, I forgot to look at the time marker on my iPod when

I got back. Should be somewhere around here. I click, and what are the first words

I hear coming out of the speakers of my computer? When I met with Ergen Kanner. And I'm like, what?

I hadn't heard that. And so I back up a little bit and I start listening to this stuff.

And remember, I have this book on Kindle, and so I fire up my Kindle for Mac. And I start looking around for this stuff.

And lo and behold, here is Cal Thomas insisting that Mark Siljander meet with Ergen Kanner.

And of course, it's the whole raised in Turkey, jihadist, come over to kill us, converted, all the lies, all the faux

Kanner stuff. And this book is from 2008, so it was before most people knew.

And still a lot of people don't, and because the great evangelical cover up will not know. But anyway, so I'm like, whoa, whoa.

So this guy meets with Ergen Kanner. Well, this is interesting, you know. So I found where I was and continued on.

I finished the book up after my ride. So as I get to the end of the book, and I'm going to read some sections to you here, because you need to hear this stuff.

You need to hear what this guy is saying. As I get toward the end of the book, I get into the theological stuff.

And what he says, he waits till well into the book before he ever addresses what are the key issues of this psalm.

Jesus is the Son of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the crucifixion. Okay, yep, that's true.

I debated that one a few times, and will do so many times in the future, Lord willing.

But as I listened to his discussions, these things, I was just absolutely blown away.

Basically, to summarize his discussion, the Son of God, is he says, well, but you see

Yalad in the Hebrew, and remember, he's big into Aramaic. He has totally bought the

Aramaic original, Lamsa's Peshitta version stuff, hook, line, sinker.

There's a vast majority of scholarship says no, but he's bought it anyways. Okay. Why in the world the

Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus in the language you wouldn't understand? I don't know. But hey, you know, they must have spoken tongues or something,

I don't know. But the whole thing he does, he goes through and he says, well, look, actually, there is no sexual union involved in the beginning of Jesus, the sonship of Jesus.

And I'm like, well, duh. Yeah, we're aware of that, you know, Holy Spirit thing.

And Yalad is a feminine noun, and so Yalad means, it wasn't a fatherhood thing, it was only through the feminine processes in Psalm 2 .7,

today I have begotten you, and it's Yalad. And I'm just sort of, I remember when I was way out toward, do you know where Seven Springs is?

Way out north of Cave Creek, it's way out there in the mountains. It's, you know, just up, down, up, down, real steep, so I'm crushing up hills and zooming down the other side, listening to this stuff, and as I'm going along,

I'm going, yeah, but In Psalm 90, verse 2, God Yalads all the creations.

Trying to build something out of the gender of this root is absurd, but,

I mean, Yalad is the same root that's used in Arabic in the third ayah of Surah Taliqaas.

So what? It's totally missing what sonship actually means in Christian theology.

I never found any place where he seemed to give any understanding. And given all the theologians he says he spent hours talking with,

I think this would be reflected somehow. But nothing there. And, you know, he goes through all this stuff.

And then, then he gets to the Trinity section, and I'm just going to read the whole thing to you, because it ain't very long.

I mean, you know, written a book on the subject, debated the subject with Muslims many, many times in public.

It's sort of special to me. I think it's important. The Gospel is Trinitarian. Without the Trinity, you don't have the

Christian faith. Here's what it says, and my new update of the Kindle for Mac now has the page numbers.

So if you have the physical book, this begins on page 145. But what about this vexing issue of the

Trinity? The phrase, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, has been the center of seemingly intractable disagreements and conflicts, both within the Christian community and between the

Christian and Muslim communities for centuries. Here's what the Quran has to say on the matter. And say not Trinity, desist, it would be better for you, for Allah is one

God, Surah 4, 171. Unfortunately, that, of course, is the Yusuf Ali translation, and it is a bad translation.

He claims to read Arabic. I'm not sure why he didn't notice that this is a bad translation. It does not say

Trinity. It says three. That's not the word for Trinity. But anyway, they do blaspheme who say

Allah is one of three in a trinity, or actually it's third of three in Arabic, for there is no God except one

God, Surah 573. If anybody wants to hear all about this, did a little debate on this subject just a few weeks ago at Trinity Road Chapel in London with Bassam Zawadi, and you can listen to that.

But is this a genuine conflict, or could it once again be simply an issue of linguistic semantics?

Now, remember, he's already dismissed the entire sonship issue as linguistic semantics. We've just been misunderstood.

That's why the book's called A Deadly Misunderstanding, is we've just been misunderstanding each other. It's just that for thousands of years now, the greatest minds on both sides have just been misunderstanding each other.

And if we just would understand differently, we would all be able to get along and sing Kumbaya together and things like that.

Throughout the Quran and at times in the Torah, such as in Genesis 1, verses where Allah is speaking in the first person are written in the plural form and often translated in English as we.

This is a typical Semitic way of honoring God, as he is too majestic to be referred to in the singular. No Muslim views

God as being literally a plurality. But his many attributes are of such great importance that his very nature can only be described in plural terms.

The Quran ascribes as many as 99 different names or sifat, divine attributes, to Allah. Allah's word,

Allah's power, Allah's life, Allah's mercy, compassion, knowledge, and so on. A list of these sifat, incidentally, forms a remarkably close parallel to the

New Testament portrayal of Allah and his attributes. See, again, he's doing this Aramaic thingamabobby where he's making the connections there.

Eastern Orthodox Christians, who subscribe to some but not all the ecumenical councils, say they believe in one

God with three attributes rather than with three persons. Um, I'm not sure that's accurate.

Those of the Nestorian sect also prefer the Aramaic word for attributes, keneme, to the

Greek concept of persons, prosopon. Though I have great, now listen to this, though I have great respect for the idea, the term trinity is nowhere to be found in the

Bible. In fact, this specific Christian doctrine of one God, three persons, was not adopted until after the first council of Nicaea in 325.

The biblical verse that perhaps comes closest to the trinity idea is the so -called triunity phrase in the first letter of John, for there are three that bear witness in heaven, the

Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one, 1 John 5, 7, New King James Version. The Kama Yohaniam, yes, indeed.

Yeah, you get in the sense that this man hasn't done much study of the trinity? Yeah, me too. Interestingly, the writer here refers not to a son, but to the

Word, which refers to the Messiah, Jesus. John's Gospel, of course, also famously speaks about Jesus as the

Word of God, even to the The Word of God, Kalimat Allah in Arabic, is also one of many attributes the

Koran ascribes to Isa, Surahs 339, 345, and 4171. It also mentions the

Holy Spirit 24 times. He doesn't mention that the Holy Spirit in the Koran is the angel

Gabriel, and is not a divine person. The Koran gives 99 attributes of God.

The Bible ascribes 46 attributes to God, and 24 specific names, El Shaddai, or God who provides all, etc.,

etc. The attributes of Father, Holy Spirit, and Son, or Word, are primal in the

Christian tradition, but whether you call them persons or attributes, the meaning is the same.

We are all talking about a single God, albeit one with many aspects. Now let me just stop right there and say, no,

Ambassador Siljander, that is not Christian theology, and it is hard for me to believe in all of your conversations with all of these

Christian theologians with whom you have met, that none of them stopped you in your tracks and said, excuse me?

Are you confusing the attributes of God with the existence of the divine persons?

I mean, that's sort of theology 101 type stuff, and yet here it is, right there on the page.

This is page 146, if you're looking for it. But whether you call them persons or attributes, the meaning is the same.

We are all talking about a single God, albeit one with many aspects. All three holy books, notice this is his words, all three holy books,

Torah, New Testament, and Koran, describe these three entities or attributes of deity,

God, Holy Spirit, and Messiah. Ambassador Siljander, that's not the

Trinity. That's not Christianity. Call it what you will. That's not Christianity. I have asked, now listen to this, listen to this.

I have asked distinguished clerics, both Muslim and Christian, if they could explain to me the interaction of these three deified attributes.

You're asking a Christian cleric. The Christian cleric should have said, those are not deified attributes.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are divine persons who have eternally existed in that relationship from before creation itself, okay, from all of eternity.

And after much bantering back and forth, in the end, they all, they have all given me the exact same answer,

Mark, it's a mystery. So what are we arguing about? As far as I could see, the controversy around the concept of the

Trinity was a theological red herring. Neither Christians nor Jews believe in a pantheon of multiple gods any more than Muslims do, or the monotheistic

Sikhs, for that matter. That's it. That's it. No defense of the

Trinity, no accurate definition of the Trinity, no recognition or understanding of what the Trinity is, and there's your bridge.

The bridge which, of course, is built right over, on top of the Trinity, because you don't, you've just destroyed it.

You don't even seem to understand it, or believe it. Amazing.

But it's going to be more amazing if you'll keep listening. Don't tune out yet, because this is only going to get more interesting.

Then, it goes on. Still on, now on page 147. Which brought me to the third and final major Christological stumbling block, the crucifixion.

And this was an issue I knew that would take serious study. An early Muslim writer described the possible consequences of this controversy in a vivid account.

Al -Urs saw in deep sleep Christ Jesus, son of Mary, who seemed to turn his face toward him from heaven.

He asked him, did the crucifixion really happen? Jesus said, yes. Al -Urs then relayed his dream to an interpreter, who said, the man who saw this dream shall be crucified, for Jesus is infallible and can only speak the truth, because the glorious Quran specifically states that Jesus was not crucified or killed.

Accordingly, this must refer to the dreamer, and it is he who shall be crucified. This matter turned out as the interpreter said.

Well, okay. Alright. The crucifixion of Jesus is one of the most serious bones of contention between Islam and Christianity.

Poor Al -Urs was himself crucified in the 7th century for even dreaming of such a blasphemous event.

Why blasphemous? Ask any Muslim and they'll tell you, because the Quran says it didn't happen. Yet of the more than 6 ,600 ayahs in the

Quran, the assertion that Jesus was not crucified derives from a single passage, and it was here that my investigation began.

Now, hopefully, most in my audience who have really paid attention to any of the teaching I've done over the past number of years on Islam, you could probably tell me without even my continuing exactly what

Surah 4, 157 says, but we will read it anyways. They said and boasted, we killed Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah, but they killed him not, nor crucified him.

But so it was made to appear to them, Arabic, shubhi halahum, for if assuredly they killed him not.

He didn't actually quote the entirety of the rest of it, but that's what he gave. This is a fascinating verse.

The they in question here is a reference to the Jews. Surah 4, 153 through 156, the discussion of a group of Jewish people, which continues in this verse.

Correct. Though it's hard to imagine this from our 21st century vantage point, there were then certain Jewish groups, both in Jesus' own time and six centuries later in the prophet

Muhammad's time. It drives me nuts, calling the prophet Muhammad all the way through, who actively sought credit for the capital punishment of Jesus.

The Quranic passage clearly alludes to this, most likely speaking of certain Jews in Medina when it points out that these particular

Jews said in boasts that they had killed Jesus. I wonder why it doesn't point out that it would be really weird if they called him Messiah, which means the

Messiah, because a Jew would never say it. But anyways, but boast or not, the historical facts are otherwise, as the

Quran itself points out. Both the gospel accounts and references in contemporary secular histories confirm that the controversial young rabbi from Nazareth was sentenced to death and executed by the

Roman authorities in Jerusalem. Indeed, it couldn't have been otherwise. Only the Romans had the legal authority to do so.

The Quranic record appears to be saying, in essence, even if a few of them claim credit, it was absolutely not the

Jews who killed or crucified Jesus. Well, this is one interpretation that people have put on Surah 4, verse 157.

The problem is the Ayah is very clear in saying it's not just the

Jews that didn't kill Jesus. Jesus himself was not killed. He was not crucified.

He did not die. In fact, Surah 4, verse 157 says he was taken up. He was taken up to God.

Now, Western Islamic scholars point out, well, normally in the

Quran means exalt. And so, you know, this doesn't necessarily mean Jesus was taken up from the earth.

But that's what the vast majority of Muslims believe. Then there is the curiously ambiguous phrase, going back to what's being said.

But so it was made to appear to them. What on earth does that mean? Well, I've read many books on what that allegedly means.

Good question. And as it turns out, there is no single agreed upon answer. In the year 923, some three centuries after the

Quran was first written down, the Arabic scholar, al -Tabari, suggested four possible answers to this perplexing question.

Number one, Jesus did not die on the cross, but was only made unconscious. Number two, it was not Jesus on the cross.

Someone else was crucified in his place. Number three, Jesus did, in fact, die, but not on the cross. In other words, he was miraculously saved on the cross and was not killed at all, but died later by other means, by implication of natural or at least non -violent causes, and was subsequently taken up to Allah.

Number four, Jesus did, in fact, die on the cross, just as the people of the book Christians claim. The second opinion, that someone else was crucified in Jesus' place, has been bandied about for centuries and certainly would fit that odd phrase, should be halakhum.

But so it was made to appear to them. Actually, I don't think that it does fit that. Muslim tradition, in some circles,

I mean, that's how it's interpreted, but I think that's a very unnatural interpretation.

It should be halakhum. Muslim tradition, in some circles, has held that Jesus' likeness was somehow transferred onto Judas Iscariot's body, that someone who looked similar to Jesus was hoisted on the cross instead, in some sort of morbid hoax.

Well, that is the majority view, the substitution view, held by the vast majority of Muslims today. Yet another interpretation held by some

Sufi Muslim mystics and certain Christian sects and historians, again, was that it was only Jesus' physical human form that was crucified on the cross, while his aspect as spirit was received by Allah into heaven, and that the

Quran meant only to deny the death of the spirit. Whatever the truth may be, the meaning of the phrase is not clear and is still a matter of debate today.

But one thing does seem abundantly clear. The passage is not a categorical denial that Jesus died on the cross.

It simply denies that the Jews were responsible for the execution. In fact, the Quran itself speaks directly and repeatedly of the death of Jesus.

In Surah 19 .33, Jesus says, So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised to life again.

Surah 5 .117 reiterates this by having Jesus say, When thou didst take me, cause me to die.

And you might just point out that Surah 19 .15 has John the Baptist saying the same thing, and we know that John the

Baptist did die. Then why the controversy? If the most one can really conclude from this passage is that it is confusing at best, and if both the historical record and the gospel accounts, which the

Quran repeatedly urges us to hold in the highest regard, record that this event did indeed occur, then why the emphatic insistence on the part of Islamic tradition and dogma that Jesus did not die on the cross?

Perhaps another answer here lay not in the study of linguistics, but in the more subjective matter of human experience of the generations since the

Quran first appeared. To understand what the cross has come to mean to Muslims, it is necessary to appreciate what happened during the

Crusades. And so he goes off into, you know, blasting the Crusades. The problem is, of course, that the

Muslim tradition in regards to the cross of Jesus predates the first Crusade by a long shot.

And the establishment of the denial of the crucifixion, hence the resurrection, and the centrality of Jesus, not only as the

Son of God, but as the Lamb of God and the sacrifice of the sins of God's people, pre -exists any type of prejudice that could be created by having crosses painted on crusaders' shields and horses and so on and so forth.

So there you go. There you go. There is what you have.

And at the end of this book, he starts promoting, right at the end, what's called the insider movement.

Now, he doesn't call it that. At least I don't think he called it that. Let me click down here. That's the nice thing about Kindle. He calls it the messianic

Muslim movement, but it's the insider movement. Here's what he says. While I refer to these people as messianic

Muslims, this is not how they identify themselves. They retain their cultural identity. They go to the mosque and read the

Quran, and they pray in the name of Jesus and read the Bible. They make every effort to be as normal as possible and not stand out.

In too many of these societies, converting to another religion is an infraction punishable by death.

So this is the insider movement. And the insider movement is a direct attack upon the attempt to proclaim the gospel to the

Muslim people. It really is. Because think about it, folks. If you can continue going to mosque and you can continue praying the prayers, which includes saying

Surah al -Fatihah, and the vast majority of Muslims recognize that Surah al -Fatihah ends that prayer to be delivered from the way of those who have been deceived and led astray.

That's the Jews and the Christians. And continue to listen to the recitation of Surah 5, verse 116, which clearly misrepresents the

Christian doctrine of the Trinity and puts words in Jesus' mouth. All these things. If you can continue to do that, then my friends, the book of Hebrews does not belong in the

Bible. Why do I say that? Well, think about it. Those people to whom the book of Hebrews was written were in the exact same situation.

They had been cast out of their families. They were under tremendous pressure to go back. To be cast out of your family or synagogue back then was more than just, you know, to be cast out of a church today isn't going to impact your ability to find food, but it could in the first century.

And so the book of Hebrews is written to people who were under tremendous pressure to go back to the old ways.

And if the Insider Movement is correct, if Mark Silgender is correct, the book of Hebrews shouldn't be in the canon of the New Testament.

In fact, the early church did everything wrong because they professed the name of Christ even in front of the

Roman authorities and died as a result. And it was out of the blood of those martyrs the church was built.

And so if the Insider Movement is a Christian movement, then

Christianity has no means of self -identification because its

New Testament is filled with bogus exhortations to stand firm and to entrust yourself to God even at the cost of your life.

So here's a book. And if you really want to see how this works, a mixed marriage couple came to Silgender, a

Muslim man and a Christian woman. They have one child and she's pregnant. And they're asking him, what do we do?

And let me show you how this works. She wants to tell our children about Jesus as the

Son of God, Fouad, I'm sorry, Fouad, continued, as divine, about the crucifixion, all of that.

And I don't want this. I want to prohibit her from doing this because these ideas are totally contrary to my beliefs. The woman under discussion simply sat looking directly at me, neither glancing in her husband's direction nor saying a word.

He went on, in your talk, I remember you spoke about the idea of Jesus as the Son of God. I don't remember exactly what you said, but somehow at the time, well, at the time it seemed reasonable.

Can you explain that once more here for just the two of us? I knew we were on delicate ground.

I took a few minutes to go through the whole matter of the word begotten and how neither the Greek nor the English correctly conveyed the female -stemmed

Aramaic words that implied birth from a woman, not procreation from a man. So see, still gender just rejects the inspired text.

As if, as if, as if monogamies would have, see if he'd just do his homework.

That's what I just don't understand. Hours and hours talking to these clerics, don't any of these people know the Trinity? Don't any of them understand this stuff?

I mean, it's just, he just must be talking to rabid liberals. Anyways, and the female -stemmed

Aramaic words that implied birth from a woman, not procreation from a man. I just don't understand that when you examine the actual language, what our scriptures actually said, what our scriptures,

Christians and Muslims, actually what Jesus was the son of Mary, only conceived by the konfaya -kun command of God, be and it was, much as the elements of the universe have been called into being at the beginning of creation.

When I'd finished, I stopped. Fuad slowly nodded his head and said, that's, that's amazing.

He turned to his wife and said, okay, you can teach Isa as the son of God. Then he turned back to me and said, now, can you tell us again what it was you were saying before about the so -called deity of Jesus?

Now, I stopped right there. Is that Jesus' eternal sonship? Is that Jesus' second person in the

Trinity? Of course not! But that's what you can teach. I nodded and carefully took the two of them through an explanation of that issue as well.

Now remember, we already read his entire explanation, which took, like, two pages, and says it's just a theological red herring, because you have deified attributes of God.

Not the Trinity. I don't think the man understands what the Trinity is, in any way. I nodded and carefully took the two of them through an explanation of that issue as well.

By the time I had related my experience of hearing two dozen Bengali scholars in Dhaka intoning,

Isa, ah, ruhul Allah, ruhul Allah, that is, means, ruhul Allah is the spirit of Allah.

No more than five minutes had passed. Fuad nodded his assent, turned to his wife, and said, Okay, you can say the spirit in Isa was deified, no problem.

Folks, that's what Mary Baker Eddy said. That's not Christianity. That's not in the book.

That's my comment. I figured you all can tell what my comments are. Then he turned back to me once more, leaned closer with a look of great intensity, and said,

Now, tell me about the crucifixion. He had saved the most sensitive issue for last.

As is the case for many Muslims, this was the issue in Christianity that seemed most abhorrent and irreconcilable to him. I now took my time, speaking very carefully, making sure he was with me every step of the way as we threaded our way through the language of Surah 4, 157.

I told him about an experience I had a few years earlier with the president of Algeria, the man who had been our host in our little unofficial delegation was on its way to the

Western Sahara a decade earlier. Interesting story that he had told earlier. And he goes on and on and on.

And basically, here's how it ends. The Algerian president took it in stride and his response was brilliant.

He nodded thoughtfully and said, Yes, well, how does one kill the eternal? Let me back up, because you need the rest of this.

I'm sorry. We'll get this done before the end of the program. We may not get much more else done. I've got lots of emails

I'll get to eventually, but I'm sorry. In November 2001, I had the privilege of hosting President Bouteflika when he visited

Washington. During his visit, I brought him to meet three senators in a private meeting in the Congressional Dining Room, which, as you'll recall, was practically deserted in the post -9 -11 ghost town months.

As we sat there talking about a variety of issues, including some of our thoughts about the Jesus of the Bible and Isa of the

Quran, one of the senators turned to Bouteflika and said, Mr. President, I know this is an issue in Islam.

What are your own thoughts about the whole matter of the crucifixion? I was aghast. Here we were talking to a Muslim president, and this

American had the temerity to ask him to his face to share his personal views on a matter that to a Muslim is an absolute heresy.

Surely the senator had no idea what an offensive subject this was to bring up so casually, but nevertheless, I inwardly cringed.

But not Bouteflika. The Algerian president took it in stride, and his response was brilliant. He nodded thoughtfully and said,

Yes, well, how does one kill the eternal? The senator had no reply.

I let Fuad absorb this vignette, then continued.

If the man's body was crucified, as history tells us, was indeed the case, then his body could not have been divine.

But President Bouteflika was right, of course. You can't kill God. The spirit in Isa was divine, the ruhalah.

But on the cross, he gave up that spirit. What was left was the contribution of Mary, the human part, and this part indeed died.

For a moment, we sat in silence. Then Fuad took a deep breath, turned to his wife

Gina a third time, and said, You can teach that too. I looked at Gina and said,

Is there anything else we need to look at? She smiled, and for the first time during our visit, she spoke, No, that covers everything.

Now, you and I both know that Ambassador Siljander does not seem to understand that Jesus was one person with two natures and that the crucifixion involved his self -giving, that he gave himself.

And yet the Scriptures say they crucified the Lord of Glory. He was one person with two natures.

How do you crucify the Lord of Glory? I'm sorry that senator didn't have any response. A biblically grounded

Christian would have had a response. And a biblically grounded Christian would not call the

Algerian president's response brilliant. In any case, this is the approach, the building of bridges that Mark Siljander thinks is a way of bringing world peace.

I mean, this is the stuff he's promoting. And that, folks, the insider movements, building bridges, a non -Trinitarian

Christianity, that, folks, is what made me put up the tweets that I put up yesterday.

Because I mentioned in channel the encounter recorded in the book between Dr.

Ergin Kanner and Mark Siljander. And here, beginning on page 193, as if by clockwork,

I soon received another call from Cal Thomas, who began the conversation, as is his style, by getting right to the point.

Mark, I read your research document. Now I want to take you to see Ergin Kanner. No, hi,

Mark. No, how are you? I was used to it. Um, who is that? I replied. Was a Turkish Muslim, came to America to convert us all to Islam.

Got converted himself. Now he's head of Liberty Divinity School for Jerry Falwell. I nearly gasped.

I don't... No, wait. I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Nope, we've got to go talk to him. I thought this man would be the worst person to talk to.

That he'd think I'd become a traitor to the cause. That he'd be diametrically against everything I had to say.

But then I realized, what was I thinking? And stopped. What if that were true? If there really was such a strong possibility that he'd be in complete disagreement with our findings?

Well, wasn't that exactly what we needed to find out? Okay, I replied, with no small measure of trepidation.

When will he be in Washington? He hasn't come to Washington. We're going to him. I'm driving, was Cal's reply.

You're kidding! You're going to drive me all the way to Lynchburg, over four hours away, just to meet with Jerry Falwell's Divinity School man?

Nope, he said Charlottesville. Only two hours. We're meeting halfway. It's all set up. Got reservations at a good restaurant

I'm treating. A few days later, Cal picked me up. We headed out Route 66 to Route 29

South, bound for Charlottesville, home of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and the halfway point between me and Jerry Falwell.

Cal had heard me talk a little about the idea of bridging the East -West divide, but only a smattering. So for the entire two hours in the car, he peppered me with questions.

What about the Muslims? Don't they all want to kill us? What about Jihad? Didn't Muhammad tell his followers to kill all the infidels?

What about everyone who insists that Allah and the God of the Bible are completely different? By the time we approached the campus of the University of Virginia and circled in on our restaurant reservation,

I felt as if I'd been shot at for two hours. I staggered out of the car and wondered how meeting Ergon Cantor could be any worse.

In fact, it was remarkable. Cantor, who is extremely intelligent and personable, also plied me with questions throughout our lunch, but this time

I did not feel machine -gunned at all. It felt rather like engaging and profoundly... like an engaging and profoundly attentive debriefing.

At the end of our lunch, Cantor nodded and said, Well, doable. Definitely doable.

Mark, I agree with everything you've said. I can't say whether or not Jerry will agree.

We'll see. But from what I've heard, here in this last 90 minutes, I would wholeheartedly endorse everything you're suggesting.

In 2006, when I would travel again to Sudan to meet with President al -Bashir to talk about the crisis in Darfur, Dr.

Cantor would accompany me to witness the process firsthand. In fact, the sight of Dr.

Cantor, a Turkish Muslim turned evangelical Christian, holding hands with Muslim President of Sudan and leading him in prayer has become one of the most evocative images

I've ever beheld. Cal and I got back in his car and headed north.

For a few minutes, atypically, Cal was silent. Finally, he spoke up. Well, it's one of two things.

I waited for him to continue. One, you're completely insane. He stopped again, and this time I knew he was waiting for my prompt, so I obediently asked,

And number two? Number two replied, You've actually got something here. The encouragement and comments from the

Vatican, from Ergin Cantor, from world -famous academics and theologians were impressive, exciting, and gratifying, but nothing could have been more encouraging than hearing this from my friend

Cal. So, I mentioned this in channel.

And once I mentioned it in channel, someone in channel then pointed out to me that one of the endorsements in the book is written by, you can guess it,

Ergin Cantor. Ergin Cantor endorses a book that's sub -Trinitarian, says the

Son of God issue and the Trinity are basically semantic red herrings, and gives that kind of response in regards to crucifixion, and promotes the insider movement.

And Ergin Cantor has endorsed this book. And I go, uh, really?

Honest? That's... I mean...

So, I was pretty much taken aback.

And then it got really, really interesting. Because I hadn't bothered to look anything else up other than this.

Um... Let me read to you from the Washington Post. The Washington Post.

July 8th, 2010. Remember, this book's 2008. I knew none of this until this morning. None of it.

None of it. Siljander pleads guilty in Islamic American Relief Agency lobbying case,

July 8th, 2010. A former congressman pleaded guilty Wednesday to serving as an unregistered agent in Washington for a

Missouri -based Islamic charity that the federal government said had ties to international terrorism. It was an odd outcome for Mark D.

Siljander, who said he wanted to help bridge the gulf between Muslims and Christians. A Republican who attained one of Michigan's congressional seats from 1981 to 1987 with assistance from the moral majority,

Siljander was outspoken about conservative social issues. Excuse me. Siljander confirmed in a

Kansas City, Missouri court that he contacted members of Congress in an effort to lift restrictions on the charity and then lied about his work in statements to investigators.

He could face a 15 -year prison term and a $500 ,000 fine, according to a Justice Department statement.

Siljander attorney Lance Sandak said in a statement that his client has accepted responsibility for his conduct in his pleas to an obstruction of justice charge and a violation of a regulatory statute.

We would point out that all other charges of conspiracy and money laundering against him will be dismissed and of course no terrorism charges were alleged,

Sandak said. The charity in question, the Islamic American Relief Agency, was raided and shuttered by the government in 2004 after extensive wiretaps of its officers.

In a 2008 indictment, the charity was charged with improperly sending funds to Pakistan on behalf of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had received millions from the

CIA and was briefly Afghanistan's foreign minister. He later formed an alliance with the Taliban and Osama bin

Laden and that led the United States to try to kill him with a drone missile.

On June 25th, charity director Mubarak Hamed pleaded guilty instead to sending more than $1 million to Iraq while that country was under U .S.

sanctions before the 2003 U .S. occupation. Hamed also confirmed for the first time that the charity was allied with a group in Sudan that the government said had provided funds to Al Qaeda, bin

Laden, and the Taliban. Here, this is this. Siljander's legal fate may have been sealed when

Hamed, in his court plea, contested the former lawmaker's claim that the charity had paid him $75 ,000 not as a lobbying fee, but to help underwrite a 2008 book

A Deadly Misunderstanding, a congressman's quest to bridge the

Muslim -Christian divide. The Justice Department has said the funds paid to Siljander were stolen by the charity from a

U .S. agency for international development grant intended to finance work in Mali. The department said that a fundraiser for the group

Abdel Azim El Cidic of Chicago admitted to having joined with Hamed to hire

Siljander as a lobbyist while deliberately concealing the payments. The money was funneled through non -profit entities controlled by Siljander, it said.

In response, Siljander acted as an agent of the charity in contacts during 2004 with the

Senate Finance Committee, U .S. Aid, the Justice Department, and the Army. He sought unsuccessfully to have the charity removed from a list of organizations suspected of financing terrorism, the

Justice Department said. Siljander, a resident of Great Falls, was known among social conservatives as the author of a law barring

U .S. Aid from spending any money to lobby for abortion. That is from the article

Washington Post by R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post staff writer, Thursday, July 8, 2010.

Had absolutely no earthly idea of any of that stuff.

The whole reason I looked at this book was theological. Had no idea that Ergen Kanner was mentioned in it.

Had no idea. In the Kindle version, there are no endorsements. I was just looking.

I can't find any. But if you go online, you discover that one of the endorsements is by Ergen Kanner.

In fact, if I could ask somebody, please, in channel to post, in channel, the endorsement from Ergen Kanner, I would like to read it.

It would be difficult for me to pull that up myself right now. But if you could do that, I would appreciate it. So my whole interest, and I was going to get to a lot of other stuff.

I've got all this stuff here. I've got emails and Mark 6 and Act 17, and we're just going to have to push it off to the next dividing line because we're not going to go for another half hour, as you all can tell.

I'm sure you've all been able to tell. My voice is not in the best shape. I've been fighting an upper respiratory infection for a few days now.

And it's not going to make it past our normal time today. I apologize for that. But the whole reason that I want to do this was a theological one because this kind of stuff is out there and this kind of perspective, this kind of understanding.

Okay, here we go. There is an acknowledgment. Dr. Ergen -Kanner for his dynamic editing and confidence.

I guess he actually had a part in the book. I hadn't seen that. And here is the specific statement.

I believe passionately that Siljander has discovered a real pathway here, a means to open dialogue that we have not seen in centuries.

Folks, this book promotes a sub -Trinitarian, sub -Biblical perspective that promotes the insider movement.

Now, can someone please explain something to me? We know that...

Why is Ergen -Kanner considered an expert on Islam? Because of his lies about Islam.

He lied. He was not raised in Turkey. He was born in Sweden and raised in Ohio.

He was not trained in madrasas in Istanbul or Cairo or Beirut as he lied about.

And as now the great evangelical cover -up continues to allow people to think is the truth.

And so now you see that these things matter because his lack of discernment and we've documented his lack of discernment.

We've documented his lack of discernment in his dialogue with the one, this Pentecostal pastor.

When he tried to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, he did a Trinitarian faceplant.

He wasn't able to do it. And now you see the impact it has.

It's not just some little thing over in the corner. And posting all the silly, completely refuted excuses that continue to appear on Norman Geisler's website under his authority only makes

Norman Geisler complicit in this kind of stuff. But how in the world can

Ergen -Kanner say, hey, this is great stuff. This is an insight.

How can he say the Camel Method is wrong and promote a book that endorses the

Insider Movement? The Camel Method is fundamentalist orthodoxy in comparison to the

Insider Movement. I mean, the contradiction is so glaring.

Hasn't anyone noticed it? I've noticed it just now. I had no earthly idea.

None. Before that email, you sent that email over, right? From that email, from someone saying, have you seen this book?

Could you respond to this book? I didn't know who Mark Zildjander was. Had no earthly idea. And the thing is,

I almost didn't send it over. I looked at it and I thought, who's this guy? I almost didn't send it over.

I know, I know. And I looked at the book and I almost didn't buy it.

But I thought, well, you know, this is the area I'm in and it's the stuff that I'm dealing with. And, you know, I can't do everything.

People think that I'm behind everything going on on the Internet. I am not. Neither is Turin Fair, for that matter.

But it just so happened that there it was. And I've been blown away, personally, just this morning in discovering this stuff about the legal stuff.

And then now, just now, Bigelow, over across the pond there,

I didn't even see in the acknowledgements that Canner had actually read the manuscript and identified as an editor.

Absolutely amazing. Go back, listen to what I read. And if you can, in any way, shape, or form, put together what

Zildjander said with what Canner has said in all those videos on the

John Ankerberg show, you know, Ankerberg has supported him and his publisher has supported him and all that stuff.

Excuse me, can you put these two things together, guys? You can't. Does the man just completely lack all discernment?

Absolutely, absolutely, positively shocking. I don't even know what to say. I don't know what to say.

I'm sorry I did not get to the other stuff that I said I was going to get to. I wanted to respond to the use of some atheistic material.

I will get to it. It's called Questions for Bible Thumpers at jhuger .com. I do not suggest you go there.

The man is profane. If you don't mind seeing four -letter words and scatological language, then you can go there.

But I'm going to be working through some of the absurd arguments that he makes because there is a professor,

James Watkins, at Santiago Canyon College in Orange, California, who is referring his students to this kind of stuff.

And so we're going to go through and just demonstrate its bankruptcy and how shallow it is. And we'll get to that,

Lord willing, on Tuesday. But I just couldn't rush this.

You have to hear what the book is actually saying and how this quote -unquote method works.

That's why I wanted to read the whole thing where Suljander is talking to the Muslim husband and the

Christian wife. And the result in all of these bridge -building experiences is that when you're standing in the middle of the bridge, what you're standing on is neither

Christianity nor Islam. What these people are saying is you have to abandon the core affirmations of both of these religions, and then we can come to this common consensus.

Folks, the answer to the Christian -Islamic divide is the gospel of Jesus Christ, not a watered -down version, not a compromised version.

It is the gospel. And I'm sorry, it doesn't seem that Mark Suljander ever understood what conversion was because his whole discussion of searching for conversion in the

Bible demonstrated that he doesn't understand what that is. That's bowing the knee in repentance and faith before the

Lord Jesus Christ as your maker, creator, and redeemer. There is no

Christianity. Ambassador Suljander, if someone refers you to this webcast, there is no

Christianity that does not have Jesus Christ as Lord at its very heart, at its very center.

That's the message every Muslim in the world needs to hear because that is the only means of forgiveness of sin and peace with God.

Well, there you go, folks. I'm sorry I took the whole hour, but I felt it was important to go through so many ramifications, so important what the book says, and we respond to it.

But folks, the great evangelical cover -up remains a blight, a black eye in the quote -unquote discernment and apologetics ministries.

And it's not going away. We need to bring pressure to bear on these folks to repent and be restored.

We'll be back on Tuesday, Lord willing. We'll see you then. God bless. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for We need a new reformation day

It's a sign of the times The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm

Won't you lift up your voice Are you tired of plain religion It's time to make some noise

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