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

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

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

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now 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 heading to St.

Louis, actually St. Charles. Tomorrow morning, heading back for my 13th year at Covenant of Grace Church.

I think it's the 12th year in a row, the first weekend in December. That's called tradition right there.

And we're going to be tackling the doctrine of the Trinity again this year.

I figure after a decade, it's probably good to be reviewing what you've done before because something tells me that even people who took the best notes might need a review of such things after an entire decade.

And so we will be doing that. And of course, over the past 12 years or so since we last did this subject,

I have been debating Muslims and I've had further debates with Oneness Pentecostals.

And so there you go. Hopefully that will add to the material that we could present.

And so that's what we're going to be doing this weekend. Today while rowing,

I listened to the debate between David Wood and Zakir Hussain. I was very disappointed.

It's interesting, Zakir closed his closing statement, was basically saying how disappointed he was in the debate.

I was disappointed because Zakir Hussain did exactly what

I expected Zakir Hussain to do, unfortunately. And that was he did the throw everything but the kitchen sink thing once again.

You make your presentation and then in the rebuttals, you just fire all your guns on every topic, every subject.

And you do it by just making all these assertions that show that while you've read some books, you don't understand the process of scholarship.

You don't understand the arguments against your position. You just make these bland statements because you find it in one book someplace.

Well, that means it must be true. And you just throw all that out there knowing that it's completely impossible for your opponent to even begin to respond to the number of points you make.

And then when he does and he deflates some of your points, you know he can't get to the other ones.

And so you just repeat them. You go, I didn't have a response to this or he didn't have a response. And it's a it's a really transparent mechanism.

And I had I had hoped, to be honest with you, I really had positive hopes that Zakir Hussain would be more than than this, that that maybe the reason he did that with me was because he was he's young, he was nervous, he was going too fast.

But a couple of months have passed and now he's debating David Wood and he's doing the exact same thing. And then throwing in just unnecessary stuff like accusing

David of twisting the scriptures and playing with the text when he's the one who can't read the languages.

He had done that with with me. And it's sort of like, really?

And how old are you again? I was teaching this subject when you were in diapers, son. So anyways, that's that was an interesting debate.

And in that sense, but not so much in the sense of. If you really want truth to be presented and handled well, that's that's not the way to do it.

And that's that's a shame. So anyways, I I do have

I've been sort of hitting refresh on YouTube over and over again, hoping that the video of the

Paul Williams and Chris Green round two debate would be posted and I have not been able to find it anywhere.

It is it's not in any of my feeds and none of my searches seem to pull it up. So I can't

I would really I'm really looking forward to that. I have a feeling it'll probably come out over the weekend or early next week and we will definitely get to that.

I have the rest of Williams's opening statement queued up if we get to it today.

But I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine tabs open in my dividing line materials folder.

So I'm not sure how far we're going to get there, but I don't have to spend a whole lot of time on every one of them.

Just a bunch of stuff that every once while I just have to comment on these things. First of all, get you know, it's the holiday season and I have some dear friends back east that I'm not sure when

I get a chance to do it, especially over this weekend. But sometime I need to find the time to get on Zazzle and I'm going to I'm going to create some special stuff just just for them.

But it's it's that the time of the year when you think of others and and the giving of gifts and so on and so forth.

And one that you might want to, you know, if you have if you have that emergent person in your life or that that wacky liberal, there's there's a new a new item you might want to consider.

And it's called a new New Testament. Yes, a new

New Testament. And it's N -E -W -N -E -W, not N -U -N -U. It's a new

New Testament. Yes, that's what it is. It is a reinvented

Bible for the 21st century. Containing traditional and newly discovered texts, isn't that exciting?

Yes, indeed, folks, you can now buy it's going to be coming out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2013.

And of course, it's been put together by such notable conservatives as Karen King and John Dominic Crossan and Barbara Brown Taylor and people like that.

Right. And what does it contain? Well, it's it has it has some stuff from from your regular

New Testament that there is there is stuff from from the regular New Testament in it.

But it's it's now got it's sort of been updated. And so you've got you've got the

Gospel of Luke with the Gospel of Mary and Paul's letters with the letter of Peter to Philip, the revelation to John with the secret revelation to John.

And as they say, this offers the exciting possibility of understanding both the new and the old better.

I'm sorry, this is absolutely positively amazing.

I predict a minimum of of. Twelve copies sold, but it's going to be out there and, you know, you may end up running into somebody, what do you think of this new

New Testament? And you go, you mean the book where they compiled all this stuff together from people who didn't believe the same things and try to call that a

New Testament? Yes, sir. Are you sure you're not reading this off of the sacred sandwich? I'm not reading this off.

This is Empathios .com, believe it or not. Oh, man. Yep, yep, yep, yep. In February of 2012, the

Council of Scholars and Spiritual Leaders convened by religion scholar

Hal Taussig came together to discuss, debate and reconsider which books belong in the

New Testament. So, hey, you know, the Jesus Seminar came along years ago and decided to, you know, redefine the canon of the

New Testament and decided to add the Gospel of Thomas in. And when they made their translation, the scholars version.

And so, hey, why not? Why not reopen the issue? Luther did it, right?

Well, no, of course he didn't, but it's commonly improperly said that they did.

And they give you an example here. Take, for instance, one of the texts that was very high on my list.

And this is Bruce Ray's Chao, another stalwart conservative conservative.

Sorry, I can't say it with a straight face. I was sent out from power. I came to those pondering me and I was found among those seeking me.

Look at me, all you who contemplate me. Audience, hear me. Those expecting me, receive me.

Don't chase me from your sight. Don't let your voice or your hearing hate me.

Don't ignore me any place, any time. Be careful. Do not ignore me. I am the first and the last.

I am she who is honored and she who is mocked. Oh, never mind. I'll stop right there.

I hadn't read all the rest of it. It gets a little bit PG -13 there. Anyways, yeah, that's that's the new

New Testament. And with edited with commentary by Hal Taussig and available next year.

Maybe you could give a gift certificate or something, put it in somebody's sock. Oh, like I said,

I predict a minimum of a dozen dozen sold. It will, like so many of the things that have come before it, pass into the oblivion that it deserves.

And there you go. Then we have another story of the bullying of the

Freedom from Religion Foundation, headed up by Dan Barker and Company. Kansas town forced to remove cross a town in central

Kansas that was founded more than 100 years ago by immigrants escaping religious persecution is once again facing religious persecution.

The tiny town of Bueller is being forced to remove a religious cross from its town seal after a group called the

Freedom from Religion Foundation complained that the symbol violates the establishment clause of the

U .S. Constitution. The group said the cross indicated government endorsement of Christian. Now, of course, we all know that Dan Barker and his boys up there have more lawyers on retainer than certain branches of the

U .S. government. And they exist to misuse the law to persecute

Christians in the United States. That's what they exist to do. They exist to absurdly reinterpret the

Constitution United States outside the context in which it was originally written and to create a completely secular state.

They would really appreciate if we would all just keep to ourselves and keep our religious ideas out of the marketplace of ideas.

And while the city did not want to do this, the fact is they were threatened with a lawsuit and they just don't have the money to fight it.

And so, you know, it was a faith based community, but they can't tell anybody about it now thanks to the militant atheists who hate

God and hate the expression of belief in God and misuse and abuse the law to.

It's just sad. It's it's really, really sad. I can guarantee you one thing. There's a single person, not a single person who signed the

Constitution was part of the creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and so on and so forth that would have supported such a thing.

We all know that church services were held in public buildings and and Bibles were printed with public monies.

And, you know, these are all facts, but nobody knows them anymore because the educational system is corrupt.

And so they're going to have to remove. Now, they can have all sorts of secular symbols because, see, these these folks are secular.

They are secularist fundamentalists. They're secularist jihadis. That's the best way to describe them, secularist jihadis.

Instead of using bombs and guns, they they use lawyers.

And that's how they they promote their their their secular jihad. But they're out there and we hear about them every year right around this time, isn't it?

Yeah, right around this time in Easter is when you hear the most about Freedom from Religion Foundation. They're doing their fundraising.

And I think they'd probably like us to be like Sweden. Sweden. I love this one.

Wednesday, 28th of November. Head teachers in Sweden have been told they can take pupils to Christmas services in church.

But Jesus cannot be mentioned. Advent services for children are part of the curriculum, but religious content has been ruled out by education officials.

They said prayer, blessings or declarations of faith are all banned. Yesterday's Metro newspaper reported.

Last year, the Scottish government came under fire for failing to mention Christmas in its winter festivals program.

St. Andrew's Day. What is this? I apologize, my my.

I should know this as as as one of Scottish extraction, but. Hogmanay and Burns Night, well, of course, we all know

Burns Burns Night were all mentioned several times in a press release, but Christmas was excluded in January 2011.

It emerged that more than three million school diaries with no reference to Christmas or Easter had been issued by the

EU Commission. The diaries made reference to Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Chinese festivities, as well as Europe Day.

But December 25th just carried the message. A true friend is someone who shares your concerns and doubles your joy.

You know, they don't think that secularists have a particular religion they don't like. Yeah. An EU ombudsman later ruled that a separate sheet correcting the omission was sufficient and a reprint was not needed.

In 2009, Christmas carolers were banned from the House of Parliament in case they inconvenienced MPs having lunch.

And the same year, Rockdale Borough Council put up Christmas lights in August in order to celebrate the religious festivals of several faiths.

The move was described as absolutely ludicrous by one local resident. Yeah, well, there's still people with some common sense.

But there you go. Sweden bans the mention of Jesus at kids Advent services. Mrs. Miller, Mrs.

Miller, why are we here? Well, Bobby, um, well, you see, um, winter solstice, um, uh, shortest day of the and Sweden, you know, it's going to start getting warmer now.

We we don't know. We we can't tell you. I'd like to tell you. I used to be able to tell you, but I can't tell you anymore.

Bobby, we cannot tell you unless we'll have to lock you up in a FEMA camp. That's right. Well, then have FEMA in Sweden.

But that's OK. Also from WWW dot Christian dot org dot

UK, which is the Christian Institute. Good place to subscribe to and get information.

Four schools in America face court action unless they agree to put a children's storybook about lesbian mums.

You can tell this is English because that would never appear here. Lesbian mums on library shelves.

The book was taken away because of parental objections, but activists are threatening to sue.

The book in our mother's house was removed from library shelves at four schools in the

Davis School District in Utah. After parents objected, I personally think we need

Brigham Young back in Utah. Brigham Young might he might have a few choice words about this particular situation.

The book is still available on request at the libraries, but students need permission from their parents to take it out.

The American Civil Liberty Union, Liberty's Union. This is, again, from England.

We believe we know the ACLU here, which backs gay marriage, has threatened to sue the school district.

However, the school district is sticking to its decision, saying that parents should be in the driver's seat. Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts.

One parent complained about the book, saying it normalizes a lifestyle we don't agree with. Well, congratulations. Another parent commented that it is not a natural process to have a complete family without a male and a female.

Again, just really common sense, but common sense has pretty much been banned in Western societies.

And so those of you who still live on the basis of common sense, you need to, you know. Get a clue.

The ACLU claim, the ACLU claims, it would be plural, that constitutional laws which protect free speech mean the book must be forced onto library shelves.

It is not the first time the cases involving gay storybooks in schools have ended up in U .S. courts. In 2006, a family in Massachusetts were upset that an elementary school had failed to get their permission before using a gay marriage storybook,

King and King, with their young child. In January 2008, a federal appeal court rejected the parents case, saying schools are not obligated to shield individual students from ideas which potentially are religiously offensive.

Notice, once again, one of the biggest problems we have is that while secularism, which is a religion unto itself, is allowed to have the entirety of the support of our tax dollars, it is excluded from the realm of religion because people don't recognize it is a worldview unto itself.

They don't think these things through. And so it wins by default. Lack of clarity of thought, which we see a lot of these days in so many, many different ways.

One other from the Christian Institute, words husband and wife axed from marriage certificates.

The health department in the U .S. state of Washington is to remove the words husband and wife from marriage and divorce certificates after same -sex marriage was approved in a recent referendum.

The state began changing legal document wording before the public vote even happened, according to a spokesman.

Tim Church from the health department said spaces once reserved for a bride and groom will become more gender neutral.

We are proposing a change where it will say something like spouse A and spouse

B. The law comes into effect on the 6th of December. Over 30 states have voted against redefining marriage.

Just three have voted in favor and they misspelled favor again because, again, these are Brits. The U .K.

government has said the words husband and wife will have to be removed from official documents if marriage is redefined.

And France, the words mother and father are set to be stripped from official documents under its plans to redefine marriage.

The move would see the words or parents used in identical marriage ceremonies for both heterosexual and homosexual weddings.

The utter collapse of civilization is upon us as we see all around us.

Words no longer have meaning and we will reap what we sow. It is truly amazing and I must apologize to the next generations.

I was watching a wonderful film a couple of days ago. It was made in the 1960s,

I think it was 65 if I recall correctly. It's one we've probably all seen at some point or another.

It's called The Sound of Music. Ah, yes, the hills are alive with the sound of music.

You say, oh, but there's Romanus and that I know I didn't really mind that too much.

That really wasn't the focus of anything, was it? It wasn't. But something struck me.

I mean, aside from all this, the terribly stereotypical relationship,

I mean, the mother had died and so now you have the overbearing father who's the the naval veteran and and, you know, the children and are all, you know, and then in comes

Maria and she just love comes into the family once again and all, you know, it's all wonderful.

I didn't know it was based on a real story. I didn't realize until I got the iTunes version and I saw pictures and heard about how the real

Maria von Trapp had actually been on the set and had been rather domineering on the set, actually, that the producer and the director was like, get her out of here.

Anyway, something struck me that would have to strike, especially the younger generation as being so wrong.

But it was so beautiful at the time, and I'm sorry, younger generation, that you're you're not going to get to understand this.

It's been taken away from you. Secularism is a very, very ugly worldview. It's empty. It's shallow.

You're reduced to a mere animal. I'm sorry that that the high calling of a

Christian worldview is being denied to you. I really am. But remember, after the wedding.

Captain von Trapp, Georg, as he was called, and Maria return and before they have to try to escape because they're going to try to force him to join the

German Navy, which, by the way, there was like a 10 year gap between when it actually happened and this, but they sort of put it all together and make it more interesting.

And by the way, it didn't climb any mountains either. They pointed out that if they had to climb the mountains, those mountains, they would have ended near Berchtesgaden, which was

Hitler's home. That wouldn't have been good. So they actually went the other direction. But anyhow. I'm ruining the story for it.

I didn't mean to do that. But remember, after Maria comes home and now they're married and and Liesel calls her mother and oh,

I like hearing that. And you all remember that. And then they have a musical number.

And one of the lines, it just I don't know, it was sort of like, I mean, how many times have we all well, maybe some of you are too young to ever watch this, but most of us know what

I'm talking about here. It had never struck me before. But struck me now.

It was, you know, Maria is talking to her, you know, her boyfriend has gone off of the

Nazis, basically, and is treating her badly. And and he's the one that. Captain Von Trapp has to take the gun from later on, all that kind of stuff.

But anyway. She's asking about that and they sing this little song that I guess was a continuation of 16 going on 17 thing.

And at one point, Maria says in talking about marriage.

And now you belong to him, now you belong to him, words.

That once were filled with meaning and joy, utterly indecipherable.

In the secularist worldview. Meaningless. The context in which they were spoken and what they meant.

Pass a. Old school. And I say people are saying, oh, you're you don't want to be behind history.

Well, when history is heading over the cliff, I want to be behind. I want to be behind.

And this insanity, this evil, this blight upon our culture, it is truly an amazing thing and it's it's sad, it's sad.

I'm I'm glad that, you know, last summer when

I did a wedding ceremony for my daughter.

It still said husband and wife or bride and groom. I forget which one it was, but it recognized what marriages and marriage had not been profaned.

It had not been reduced. To a mere. Contract between two people, whoever.

Whoever doesn't matter. Sad. Very, very sad.

And this goes along with a note from again, you know, there are times

Doug Wilson gives me hives, but most of the time I'm I'm right there with him.

We've debated. We have a lot of things we disagree on, but when we agree on things, we agree real well.

And he wrote a blog article. Called it is confusion. It is confusion.

It. Comes now word that Germany has perfectly legal barnyard brothels.

Where pimps get to rent out the livestock for sexual purposes. Yeah, yeah, you you read that correctly,

I had seen that and amazing and he points something out that is interesting.

Leviticus 18, 23. Now, this is just that plain old holiness code that nobody's really concerned about anymore, right?

No one really worries about the holiness code, because that's where you're not supposed to wear a mixed cloth. That means it's irrelevant.

That's what everybody says. But Leviticus 18, 23 says, neither shall thou lie with any beast to defile thyself there with.

Neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down there, too. It is confusion. Confusion.

It is confusion. Tevel. It's not just Toeva, an abomination, it is confusion, it is a.

A complete. Well, he calls it it is a it is simple, of course, an abomination, of course, but it's also confusion, it is dislocated and out of joint, it is a muddled monstrosity, it is demented.

Exactly. That's exactly right. It is it demonstrates a a person and then when it becomes legal, a people and a culture who are not just confused.

I mean, I get confused. Everybody can get confused. That's that's that's not a big deal.

But when the categories of human existence themselves, who we are in this world, what our purposes are, what is good and what is evil.

When that becomes. Confused, then you have.

You have something that is demented on a level that's hard to imagine. It is confusion, it is a demonstration that a person has been so given over to their own depravity that the very categories of existence itself are no longer understandable to them, no longer understandable.

And the scary thing is when those people then have the political power to try to force the rest of us.

To live in light of their perversions. That's one really, really good reason.

Really, really, really good reason. To limit. The power of government.

Is because if for no other reason, no other reason than to recognize that man is depraved.

And when man is depraved. And man is in charge of government, he will utilize.

The force of government. To promote his worldview and his depravity, because we know, according to Romans chapter one, we know that those who practice these things encourage others, encourage others.

To do the same thing. That's why you need to have limitation on government.

We then saw, I told you I had a number of these, I was pointed to anything that shows up on on HuffPo will automatically be opposed to the

Christian faith. We all know that. I mean, if you want, again, another example of the utter depravity of our culture, just Huffington Post is a great place to find it.

But there's a woman, author of Introduction to the Bible, wrote an article called

Five Common Misconceptions about the Bible. Christine Hayes is her name. And I was just looking it over,

I forget whether it was in channel or in Twitter. That's someone. And it was just, I understand why a lot of people see these things and go, what, what?

I guess it is one of the advantages that I could not have foreseen. I could not have understood in the providence of God why he was putting me through these things.

The Lord, you know, it's interesting, the Lord used economics to force me through Fuller Theological Seminary.

The Lord brought my firstborn son into existence to force me through, I mean, literally we realized, my wife and I realized that we were going to have our firstborn child while visiting

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. I was looking at going to Golden Gate. I graduated from Grand Canyon and we were in Mill Valley.

That's where I was looking at going. When we realized we weren't going anywhere because she was expecting.

And man, he came early. So we were in debt. I don't know we've ever gotten out of debt after that.

But I mean, I just wasn't making much back then.

And so we couldn't go anywhere. So I had to go with what was available in Phoenix.

And there was only one seminary at that time in Phoenix. That was just one. Fuller's Phoenix campus.

That was it. All you could do. And there were times

I'd come home frustrated. I had a good friend who graduated after I did. Came over to my apartment one evening in tears after a

Fuller class because it was so far to the left of where we were. And it was so depressing at times.

Wasn't there weren't good classes. My church history classes were real good. And I learned to filter through the liberalism and blow the dust away and get the gem.

I really did. I really did. No question about it.

But the fact of the matter is God used that to expose me to all this stuff that a lot of people who grew up in our churches and I've made special effort.

I really have. And I commend the dear folks of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, at least those who continue coming to the adult

Bible study class. There are a few who don't. But I commend you for having survived.

My making sure that you know this stuff yourself, that you've been exposed to it. That you could read this article by Christine Hayes and just chuckle all the way through.

Could just laugh all the way through. Because you just go, duh. And you've already heard not only these presentations, but how to respond to these presentations.

But that's not the case in most evangelical churches. That's not what you'll get.

And so as a result, people run into this kind of stuff and it really throws them for a loop.

Five myths. Five common misconceptions. Well, if anyone held those, you know, you look at them and the

Hebrew Bible. Correction number three. The Hebrew Bible is not a timeless or eternal work that stands outside the normal processes of literary production.

Well, that's a loaded statement anyways. Why can't it be both?

Why can't it both be the eternal word of God that then is inspired in a particular way that demonstrates that God used individuals.

That God enters into relationship with his people. I mean, it's just, liberalism is always a simplification of things anyways.

It masquerades as being so greatly advanced, but it isn't. It's books emerged from specific times and places.

Reading the Bible alongside parallel materials from the many cultures of the Ancient Near East shows the deep indebtedness of the biblical authors of the literary heritage of the

Ancient Near East. Really. I love when people say that and then

I drag out Pritchard and the Ancient Near Eastern text with supplements that I've had for years in my library and pop them open and go, wow, there's a huge difference here, isn't there?

Yeah, yeah, there is. It's just more of the same repetitive stuff. They're just repeating what they've been told.

Liberalism has its fundamentalism. Secularism has its fundamentalism. Those folks don't really listen too much to what the other side has to say.

Another thing that I wanted to get to was a letter from Hobby Lobby Store's CEO, David Green.

And as you may know, this particular company has an open

Christian perspective as to how to do business. And well,

I'll just read the beginning. When my family and I started a company 40 years ago, we were working out of a garage on a $600 bank loan, assembling miniature picture frames.

Our first retail store wasn't much bigger than most people's living rooms, but we had faith we would succeed if we lived and worked according to God's word.

From there, Hobby Lobby has become one of the nation's largest arts and crafts retailers with more than 500 locations in 41 states.

Our children grew up into fine business leaders, and today we run Hobby Lobby together as a family. We're Christians.

We run our business on Christian principles. I've always said that the first two goals of our business are, one, to run our business in harmony with God's laws, and two, to focus on people more than money.

And that's what we've tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week's biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest.

We believe that it is by God's grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We've not only added jobs and a weak economy, we've raised wages for the past four years in a row.

Our full -time employees start at 80 % above minimum wage, et cetera, et cetera. Then it says, but now our government threatens to change all of that.

A new government health care mandate says that our family business must provide what I believe are abortion -causing drugs as part of our health insurance.

Being Christians, we don't pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don't cover emergency contraception, the morning after pill, or the week after pill.

We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that's contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one.

If we refuse to comply, we could face $1 .3 million per day in government fines.

Our government threatens to fine job creators and a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that's raised wages four years running.

Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It's not right. I know people will say we ought to follow the rules.

That's the same for everybody, but that's not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate for reasons of convenience or cost, but it won't exempt them for reasons of religious belief.

So Hobby Lobby and my family are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today represented by the

Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don't like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice.

We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.

My family has lived the American dream. We want to continue growing our company and providing great jobs for thousands of employees, but the government is going to make that much more difficult.

The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law. I said it's a choice no American and no

American business should have to make. The government cannot force you to follow laws that go against your fundamental religious belief.

They have exempted thousands of companies but will not exempt Christian organizations, including the Catholic Church. Since you will not see this covered by any of the liberal media, pass this on to all your contacts.

So there is David Green and we know they have filed a suit and I'm looking at ordering some model rockets from Hobby Lobby.

Just it's sort of like going to Chick -fil -A. You know, I think what I'll do is

I will build a model rocket that I bought at Hobby Lobby while eating Chick -fil -A. I think that now the grease from the chicken might affect some of the joints.

You know, I'm putting the fins on or something like that. They won't paint real well, but no one really cares about that. But so I think

I'm going to set up a day sometime in the not too distant future because I was looking at the at the rockets and there are some look pretty cool.

They didn't have any two stage. I love two stage rockets. They're so much fun. I mean, you really got to go out in the desert, but a two stage

D. Oh man, that is just too much fun. You weren't a member of the

Estes Aerospace Club as a young man, were you? I was. I was. I even remember the little t -shirt

I had where you could you'd it was an iron -on type thing. And as you went through each level, you'd get a new color set of it was the thrust coming out of the engine type thing.

And the farther it got, the better colors and stuff like that. Oh, that was I live for that. I live for that. I had college roommates that made their own model rocket fuel.

Oh, now that. No, I didn't. No, no. Including one accident where he tried to make it in liquid form and it got smoke all over.

Oh, OK. No, I didn't do that. I know I didn't do that. Dr. O, do you still launch rockets with your dog?

Daisy May. Daisy May has been dust for many decades. I'll go.

He Daisy May has been gone for a long, long time, but it's been about seven years because we have to now drive.

I mean, where do you go to launch rockets anymore? I mean, even in a park, if you get any wind at all and you really put a decent engine in it, it's going to end up in a neighborhood on somebody's roof or in a pool or being eaten by a

Doberman or something. You know, like I said last time. So anyways. That's what

I'm going to do. I'm going to I'm going to set some time apart to to make a model rocket while eating

Chick -fil -A. That's how I'm going to impact my world.

Not really, but it'll make me feel a lot better. That's for sure. One more thing and then we'll switch over to finishing up some of this

Paul Williams stuff. Get back to it as I've promised that we will. I was pointed to a comment from Jason Stellman.

In regards to the issue of Sola Scriptura, someone had asked him, could you elaborate on James Wright's response to your questions regarding Sola Scriptura?

I thought you made a valid point regarding the implementation of the principle, but I don't remember if you mentioned in the podcast how he responded.

I'd be curious to know how he dealt with that one. My question to him and the response from Jason Stellman was my question concerned how

Sola Scriptura was implemented in the Catholic Church. His response was there was a significant gap between the death of the last apostle and the church's realization that God's revelation was to be limited to the canonical text.

I'll just stop for a moment. This demonstrates real confusion on Jason's part. That makes sense when you're in the throes of apostasy, you're going to be confused.

But it's confusing two very different issues. One is the issue of the canon of Scripture.

The other is the ultimate authority of Scripture. Now, if you want to conflate them, you can do so, but I didn't conflate them.

Maybe one of the mistakes that I made was more of an assumption on my part that as a graduate of Westminster Seminary, he would understand

Reformed theology and understand what Warfield and others had written on these subjects, and he would be able to recognize the difference between external canonization issues and internal inspiration authority issues and the categories related thereto.

I did mention the fact that, and it almost sounds a little bit like what's been called the white question, and that is, again,

I don't remember asking him this question. If I did, he didn't have an answer. But, again, the question that I've asked many times before, how did the believing

Jewish man know that Isaiah and 2 Chronicles were Scripture 50 years before the coming of Christ?

I don't think there's any question that they did. Jesus held them accountable for that. And so you do not need to have an infallible external authority to determine, not only determine the canon of Scripture, but for the canon of Scripture to function.

And so the issue that I raised was, well, you see the same process between the time when the last prophet is spoken and the recognition of the canon in the

Old Testament as you do the New. And if it didn't require the

Pope of Rome for the Old Testament canon to become functional in the life of the people of God, why do we need it for the

New? But, again, I think Jason just dismissed anything that was opposed to the religion that he had already chosen to join.

Maybe he just didn't even hear it. I don't know. And from what he's, I'm going to point out here, what he's saying, he's not listening to what

I'm saying now anyways, and he's not going to. That's another fairly common element of the conversion syndrome.

But anyways, I go back to what he said. He likened it to the Old Testament canon saying that a few centuries lapsed in between God's final prophetic word to Israel and their realization of that fact.

Not the realization of that fact, the recognition of what the canon was. And even though Israel had no infallible magisterium or tightly defined canon in Jesus' day, no,

I didn't say that. That's exactly wrong. I did not.

I said they did not have an infallible magisterium, but I did not say they did not have a tightly defined canon. Jesus still had them accountable

God's word and distinguish between it and human tradition. So given all that, there's no reason why it couldn't have taken a few centuries before sola scriptura really emerged in the church to recognize the idea.

That's not what I said. He's confusing sola scriptura and the canonization process. Amazing. Now, I can say which one of us is confused here because I've written books on this.

And I've laid these things out and I've debated on this. I offered those debates to him. I don't think he listened to them.

And I'm going to have to keep this post as evidence of that. But then here's what

I really wanted to point out right below that. He says, I actually haven't listened to James' podcast, so I don't know what he says about me there.

My guess, it would be hard to listen to it without getting upset or frustrated. So I've just decided to ignore it.

So there you go, folks. I have swum the Tiber River. I am now in the

One True Church. I am already teaching in the One True Church. I will ignore the fact that I am not even a priest.

I have absolutely no standing in the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church whatsoever. But I will teach anyways.

And I am not going to concern myself. With how anyone responds to my claims.

You know, it reminds me of Paul Blau Williams. And there are many other people like that.

They convert. They want to be taken as experts. I can guarantee you that if Jason goes on the speaking tour, he's going to be introduced as a convert from Calvinism.

An expert. I know these guys. I've debated Matitix and Syngenis and all the rest of them who have pulled that Trump card over and over and over and over again.

Been there, done that, got the t -shirt. But when they claim to be experts, the one thing they won't do, and I wonder why it is, is they just immediately begin to dismiss those who keep pointing out where they're in error.

They're wrong. They're misrepresenting their former faith. That's certainly the case with Williams.

And it looks like Stellman's probably going to go the same direction. Sadly. Speaking of Paul Williams.

Have him queued up and ready to go. And we do need to make some more progress. I am not sure.

I marked this spot with red. In my audio note taker program.

So I think this is where we are, but I thought we were closer to the end of his presentation. So maybe

I'm wrong. I don't know. If I repeat something, I apologize. But it's been so long that I can't remember.

It's hard to keep track of those kinds of things. So I'm just going to dive into it and we will see what we will see.

And if it starts sounding really, really familiar, then I'll just sort of jump ahead, maybe. How's that? So we go back to the first encounter.

Between Paul Williams. And Chris Green. Now, remember, keep in mind.

Paul Williams uses as his excuse for not accepting my debate challenges. When I go to London.

That I hold a fundamentalist view of the Bible and have no standing. But Chris Green believes many of the same things that I do.

And in fact, he criticizes him after the second debate, having accused him of throwing a Greek New Testament at him of being a fundamentalist.

So in other words, just like so many others that I have met on that side of Mecca.

Like Zakir Naik, and I've never met Akhmed Didat, never met Zakir Naik either. But Zakir Naik is still alive.

Picking and choosing. Picking and choosing, knowing very well.

That the kinds of arguments he presents would not survive well in cross -examination against someone who actually believes he picks on folks who don't have a lot of experience.

Chris Green believes a lot of the same things that I do. But he himself started this debate by saying.

This is my first debate. So I get the feeling that Paul Williams' excuse is just that.

It's an excuse. He doesn't want to debate someone who has the experience that I do. That's all there is to it. So we pick up with what we're still in the presentation.

Now, let me stop right there.

It is common for people to look at that text and say he has made him.

Notice how I said a man. Now, every Christian believes that Jesus was a man.

And evidently, when he says made him, both Lord and Messiah, doesn't he believe

Jesus is a Messiah? But he doesn't believe he's Lord. He doesn't believe that Peter ever said these things, does he?

I don't know. But nothing that Peter says is even slightly contradictory to what

Christians believe in regards to the doctrine of the Trinity. In no way. I am reminded of the same things that that Zakir Hussain was doing in his statements.

He would throw out stuff that only demonstrated that he didn't understand what

Christians believe. Well, I can understand that was Zakir saying he's never been a Christian, but Paul Williams claims to have been.

Now, we know, obviously, that here is a good example of one who went out from us. So it might be demonstrated they were not truly of us.

No question about it. But nothing there that even begins touching things.

Now we're going to start going after the Gospel of John. And we're going to start asserting that the

Gospel of John has no historical foundation to it. And at this point, as is the want of Islamic apologists around the world today, it's very easy to find lots and lots and lots of people who call themselves

Christian scholars, some of whom actually are, who have capitulated to the application of naturalism and materialism to the analysis of inspired documents.

And as a result, come to the conclusion that, no, we can't take into consideration that John is obviously giving us a different perspective than the

Synoptic Gospels in the sense that he gives us so much more of the interpersonal teaching of Jesus, that there might have been perfectly good reasons why immediately after the time of the crucifixion, when many of these people are still alive, that these wouldn't have been things that would have been necessarily taught and presented.

John writing at a later time, there might be reasons why he feels, maybe even as the last of the apostles, that it's now appropriate to put into writing these teachings.

No, we can't allow for that. We certainly can't allow for any type of supernatural purposes involved here.

You know, we have to do what the world tells us to do. We have to look at these texts as non -inspired texts first and so on and so forth.

And so you'll find lots and lots of folks like that who will buy into that and that's what they'll present.

And so it's real easy to quote people who basically abandon Johannine accuracy and may even do so in the context of, well, his is a spiritual gospel and, well, what you've got here is you've got

John thinking about what Jesus had said and now in reflection, this is sort of what Jesus meant and all that kind of stuff.

Lots and lots and lots of folks like that. No problem. Doesn't make that accurate.

Doesn't make it consistent for Muslims who, interestingly enough, you know, it makes me chuckle whenever Paul Williams talks about my fundamentalist view of scripture.

He's a Muslim. He has a fundamentalist view of his own scripture and is just so blind that he can't see it.

It's an amazing double standard, amazing level of hypocrisy. He is clearly portrayed as a divine figure, indeed as God himself.

The Nicene Creed, I quoted earlier, finds his echo in the prologue to John's gospel where the writer says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Instead of Jesus saying in Mark's gospel, why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. John had

Jesus saying before Abraham was, I am. Now, we have already demonstrated, we've already worked through the

Markan passage and the synoptic parallels that Mr. Williams is misreading and misunderstanding.

And it's interesting, he's about to quote from Richard Balcombe, and we've played Richard Balcombe demonstrating that Richard Balcombe doesn't hold that view of the

Markan passages, why do you call me good, in Mark 10 and places like that.

But now he's just trying to create this flawed contrast between the two.

In the very first chapter of the gospel according to John, the prophet John the Baptist proclaimed

Jesus to be the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world when he first meets him.

But in the earlier synoptic gospels, John the Baptist not only does not say this, but halfway through Jesus' ministry sends messages to Jesus asking, are you the

Messiah we've been expecting or should we keep looking for someone else? Now, that is not a contradiction in any way, shape or form.

It may, I mean, this is so such simplistic, horrific mishandling of the text that it just is so offensive.

It is so offensive. Think for just a moment, how would you respond to that?

Because a lot of people raise it, look, it's nothing new here. A lot of people raise that argument, how can

John have confessed that Jesus is the Messiah and then he sends messengers, should we look for someone else?

Well, John had confessed he was the Messiah in the other gospels too.

Trying to create a contradiction between them and John on the basis of that is irrelevant, doesn't make any difference.

But the point is this, he's in prison. John is in prison and he's been there for quite a while.

And if you thought the Messiah was going to come and you thought the Messiah was going to end all of this and overthrow the

Romans and everything was going to be great and you're still in prison.

And what you're hearing from people that are coming to you, well, what's he doing?

Well, he's doing some weird stuff. He's eating with sinners and tax collectors and you're in prison.

Don't you think, wouldn't the fair minded person, not just the religious zealot, but wouldn't just the fair minded person go,

I can understand why John would ask. And how does Jesus respond to John?

He points him to the fulfillment of the scriptures in himself. There is nothing there that comes even close to being a contradiction.

And yet Paul, Bilal, Williams just throws these things out as if, oh, hell, if you're as advanced as I am, it's just so obvious, you know.

So even this Roman brief survey has shown the enormous evolution of the story of Jesus.

The enormous evolution. That's evolution for those of us on this side of the pond, just in case you were wondering what the world he was talking about.

But we haven't seen any of that whatsoever. Which occurred in less than two generations after Jesus was taken up by God.

Unlike the earlier Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke, in John, Jesus seeks for the clear awareness of his divine existence with God from before his time on earth.

But the question cannot be asked whether the Jesus of Paul's Gospel was intended to be historical.

Whether Jesus of Nazareth actually spoke in the terms used by John. Were there claims about Jesus in John's Gospel already in place from the beginning of Christianity?

Now, one of the things we've done in responding to the other things that Williams has said has demonstrated that the

Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels says things that are absolutely consistent with what

John represents in Jesus. I'm not going to repeat everything we've said. You can go to Sermon Audio.

You can look up the sermons that I did, I don't know, back in August -ish, somewhere around there,

July -August, on the deity of Christ in the Gospel of Mark.

And I dare say that Paul Williams is far out of his league to even attempt to respond to that material, but I would certainly challenge him to do so.

But, again, just because you hear the constant repetition of these false charges should not cause you to begin to believe them.

Examine them, analyze them, and see them for what they are, the simple repetition of falsehoods that take on a life of its own.

It seems hardly likely. Few scholars today would regard John as a source for information regarding Jesus' life and ministry.

Few scholars today? Really? If I said few scholars today believe that the

Quran accurately represents the views of Muhammad, what would you say? Well, Orientalists?

Well, non -Muslims? Well, unbelievers? Oh, you mean what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander?

Shall we try just for a little bit of consistency? No, no, not from that side of Mecca. In any degree comparable to the snotty

Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is worth noting briefly the reasons why scholars think this.

One is a very different picture of Jesus' ministry, both in the order and the significance of events and the location of Jesus' ministry.

For example, the cleansing of the temple happens at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in John, but occurs towards the end of Jesus' ministry in the

Snotty Gospels. A clear contradiction. A clear contradiction. I love, you know,

I really wonder if Paul Williams utilizes the same definition of contradiction when it comes to Muhammad in the

Quran that he does when he talks about the Gospels. Doesn't seem to me that he does.

He has a very broad definition of contradiction. Anything that's different, anything that has a different purpose is a contradiction.

Now, if John had said, you have heard it said to you that Jesus had a violent encounter with people who were profaning the temple at the beginning, at the end of his ministry.

But I say to you, that is wrong. It did not happen at the end of his ministry. It happened at the beginning of his ministry.

Now, that would be a contradiction. That'd be a direct contradiction. But even the people who actually take the time, like D .A.

Carson did, and like, well, any serious exegetical commentary does, to actually struggle with this issue, that kind of simplistic statement wouldn't even begin to be helpful in actually dealing with the issues at hand.

It wouldn't, I mean, again, you notice how shallow liberalism is?

I mean, it's actually, once you get into far left liberalism and you look at far right fundamentalism, they're mirror images of each other.

Totally black and white categories. No willingness to allow for different recognition of category errors.

No, it's just black and white. Fascinating how that works. Another is a slight indifference in Jesus' style of speaking.

Much more discursive and theological in John, in contrast to the accuracy and parabolic style of the

Synoptic Gospels. And of course, if I were to repeat, if I were to provide a transcript of Paul Williams' debate presentations, in comparison to Paul Williams' dinner conversations, would they be contradictory?

Or would they be a recognition of the different context of speaking? Yeah, I guess

Jesus only spoke in one way. Or would the contrast in styles be due to the fact that John is so often giving us these specific personal teachings?

Well, anyways. It's unavoidable.

No other possibility. Reminds me a little bit of Sam Gip. Most important of all, in the

Synoptic Gospels, Jesus' main message is the Kingdom of God. And he rarely speaks of himself.

Whereas in John, the Kingdom of God hardly features, and the discourses are largely about Jesus' own self -consciousness and self -proclamation.

And of course, if you actually recognize that there's much more about Jesus than just the

Kingdom of God and the Synoptics, and if you realize that Jesus is the King of the Kingdom in John, then you don't have a problem in recognizing the harmony that exists between them.

It's just so easy to be just so British, and yet to actually correct the obvious imbalances to be found in these folks.

To put it simply, in the earlier Gospels, Jesus did not preach about himself, but God and his

Kingdom. In John, Jesus speaks about himself and his Father. Had any of the striking iron clans of John be remembered as spoken by Jesus, how could any

Gospel writer have ignored them so completely as the Synoptic Gospels do?

Well, of course, we have also addressed this one before. What was the context in which we did?

Oh, oh, it was Abdullah Kunda. This was back during the summer. We addressed the issue of the

I Am Sayings rather fully at that time. This is clearly one of the MDI Talking Point lists, and the real question

I have is, will we ever see any advancement in the MDI Talking Point lists?

That's the question. Will there ever be any recognition of the response and then dealing with it?

I mean, here you just have this, here's another coulda, shoulda, woulda, coulda, shoulda argument.

Well, if Matthew had known of the I Am Sayings, he would have recorded them. Oh, so you can somehow determine exactly what

Matthew's purposes would be at his time of his writing, exactly what he would have included, right?

What about if, well, if John had known about the Kingdom of God statements, he would have, oh, wait a minute,

I just contradicted that. Sorry! Luke tells us at the beginning that he had investigated everything carefully from the very first, but his portrait of Jesus does not contain any of the

I Am Sayings found only in John. I see the acclaimed New Testament scholar

E .T. Saunders concludes. Don't you love how when they quote the people way out on the left, they're

New Testament scholars. Because when the same people talk about the Quran, they're

Orientalists. I just, you know,

I know they can get away with it because most Christians don't recognize the realm of liberalism and the deep presuppositions that have been bought into there that are almost never examined, at least critically within that tradition.

But it's just so obvious to the folks in this audience that these guys are operating on a double standard, and a double standard means you are not truthful.

What you are saying is not worthy of being given any weight of truth.

And what's the term that they call you? Gravitas. There's no gravitas to your statements.

And it's painfully obvious that's it. So when we consider the Synoptic Gospels on the one hand, and John's Gospel on the other, it is impossible to think that Jesus spent his short ministry teaching in two such completely different ways.

I agree. He actually didn't preach in two completely different ways, but I would imagine that when

Jesus spoke to the disciples privately, that he spoke to them differently than when he spoke to them publicly, or when he spoke to the crowds.

Did he not? That's even discernible clearly in the Synoptic Gospels themselves. This is rudimentary logic.

Yes, lost on many people with PhDs, but it's rudimentary logic anyway. It seems so clear.

Conveying such different contexts, and there were simply two traditions, each going back to Jesus.

One had to be 50 % of what he said, and the other one, the other 50%. Or that there was a full -orb teaching of Jesus that was transmitted at different times for different purposes, and that the earlier

Gospels held back on much of the more personal information, and John being the last disciple alive, then expands upon that.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That can't be it. Why not? Well, because the fundamental assertion of liberal theology is whatever conclusion we come to, it can't be what

Christians have always believed. How would you ever get published if that was the case?

With almost no overlap. Consequently, for the last 150 years or so, scholars have had to choose.

They have almost unanimously, and I think correctly, concluded that the teaching of the historical

Jesus is to be taught in the synoptic Gospels, and that John represents an advanced theological development in which meditations on the person and work of Christ are presented in the first person, as if Jesus said them.

So what you've got is, well, you know, in the past 150 years, post -Enlightenment and true critical scholarship, we've gotten away from all that inspired stuff.

We don't have to worry about that anymore. We don't have to worry about, you know, harmonizing things. No, no, no.

Now we just have such freedom. To do what? Well, to just say they're all contradictory.

Well, that's real tough to do, isn't it? That's real hard to do.

That's hard work, isn't it? No, not really. That's the easy way out. It's the easy way out to say, well, they're just contradictory.

That's all there is to it. World News. So notice, if you're a

D .A. Carson, if you're conservative and you actually, you know, believe in looking at the possibility of harmonization, things like that, you're not a real

New Testament scholar, see? You're just one of those folks over there. But as long as you buy into the, you know, worldly perspective and an unbelieving perspective, then you're a real

New Testament scholar. And I'm sure he makes the exact same distinctions when talking about the

Quran. I mean, I'm sure that he's consistent and the people that he reads about the Quran are the people who, you know, tear the

Quran apart and engage in form criticism and stuff like that. I'm sure that's exactly where he's coming from.

Thus, John's Gospel's stress on truth is not about documented facts, but the higher truth of who

Jesus is, which is why he writes in a biographical format. For him,

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. So it's Jesus says these words. To ask whether Jesus actually ever spoke these words is to miss the point completely, he says.

This is neither a lie nor a fiction. It's simply a way of bringing out the truth about the subject which the author wishes to tell the audience.

Now, I strongly disagree with Dr. Barrett, but he says to ask whether Jesus actually ever spoke these words is to miss the point completely.

I believe that if we wish to do response to Jesus' research, then this is precisely the kind of question we must ask.

Irony of ironies. Irony of ironies.

You know why? Because every single one of those scholars were they to be asked, and they were not fearful in their answers.

Every single one of those scholars would say it would be absolutely necessary to ask the question, what was the level of Muhammad's understanding of the issues before him in the writing of the

Quran? And yet, what is the Islamic response to that? Muhammad had nothing to do with the

Quran. They are the inviolable, eternal words of Allah. And we can't even ask the question.

So on the one hand, oh, we need to ask all these questions in the New Testament. But we will eschew the entirety of the foundational worldview of that perspective in the application of what we look at in regards to the

Quran. Now, if Paul Williams actually does believe that Muhammad's understanding, say of the doctrine of the

Trinity, might explain the misrepresentations of the Trinity in Surah 5, 5 .116,

5 .73, then I think he needs to come out and tell that to his fellow

Muslims. You know, my fellow Muslims, we need to recognize that Muhammad's thoughts and understandings are represented in the

Quran. And that would explain the fact that he didn't understand, because there's a lot of Christians today that understand.

How could you expect Muhammad to understand it? If that's his perspective,

I think he needs to tell all of his good friends about that.

I'm waiting to hear that happen. Now, so it is now widely agreed among New Testament scholars that Jesus himself, in the story of the individual, did not think of himself as divine and did not teach anything like the later doctrine of the

Incarnation. The New Testament sayings in which Jesus seems to claim divinity, such as, even he has seen me, he has seen the

Father. I, the Father, are one. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.

Are all in the Gospel of John. And it is widely agreed by Christian scholars. I apologize, I've had this at 1 .0

speed. I just picked up to 1 .2, sorry. That they cannot be responsibly attributed to this story of Jesus, but the words put into his mouth.

They cannot be responsibly attributed. So, in other words, if you believe what

Muslims believe about the Quran, but as a Christian, you're irresponsible. Just so you know that.

You're responsible to believe those things. It's responsible to believe that the moon was split by Allah, because the

Quran makes reference to it and the Hadith confirms it. That's responsible. But it's not responsible to believe that what we have in John actually goes back to Jesus.

Just make sure you're catching this. Follow the consistency. It tells you a lot.

I'd like to share with you an important finding, which very few ordinary Christians are aware of. The meaning of the term

Son of God. Again, in modern historical scholarship, has shown importance.

It has a very important light on this. We now know that the term Son of God was a familiar metaphor within Judaism.

Israel as a whole was called God's Son. Adam was called the Son of God. The angels were called the Sons of God.

The ancient Hebrew kingdoms were in fact the Sons of God. Now, by the way, this is all basic information to the beginning

Bible student. I'm not sure why Paul Williams would have been unfamiliar with this.

Which is why there is such an emphasis upon the unique use of the terms both

Son of Man and Son of God by Jesus. That's why, for example, you have the term monogamous applied to Jesus as Son of God or the

Son of God. And that's why the use of idios of Father, my own father in John chapter 5, brings out such a strong response from the

Jews. Because he wasn't using the term in the normative way, but in an exclusivistic way.

Basic facts, but you know. And we have in the Old Testament the infirmary formula, Thou art my son, this day

I have begotten you, son too. And indeed, any outstanding higher student could be called the Son of God, meaning someone who is close to God, doing

God's will, perhaps with a special wish from God. But with Hinduism, this was quite obviously a metaphor.

Jesus used it in this way when he said that we are to give our enemies so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

But what's happening here between Jesus' lifetime and the full development of humanitarian doctrine is that the metaphorical

Son of God was transformed in Christian thinking into the literal Son of God, second person of a divine trinity.

Five minutes. Thank you. It is this development that is questioned by biblical scholars today. Was Jesus a

Muslim prophet? Muslims believe that Jesus and the Hebrew prophets were Muslims too, in the sense that the word

Muslim means someone who completely submits his life to the will of God, which is what the Arabic word Muslim means.

But we do not believe that the Prophet Muhammad was greater than Jesus. This is not taught in the Qur 'an, which states quite clearly that Muslims must believe all the prophets and make no distinction between them.

We believe in God as a prophet and in Jesus. I'm not sure how a Muslim can believe in all the prophets when you don't believe you know what any of the prophets said.

There is a, you know, Muslim apologists are very quick to quote from Old Testament prophets when they can somehow, he mentioned

Qadar and that must mean Saudi Arabia, so that must mean that Muhammad's a prophet. But then when you quote like from Isaiah 9, well that's clearly been corrupted.

And if you actually looked into the text, no, don't need to, because, well, the Qur 'an says so. According to Matthew, Jesus is the

Messiah for all people. All authority has been given unto him and he sent his disciples into all the nations and all the world.

It is a gross misrepresentation of Matthew to quote from the middle of the book and ignore the conclusion.

If Paul Williams ever writes a book, we'll interpret it that way. How's that? We did not send you but as a mercy to all the nations.

Which, by the way, is also said very much of Jesus and a few other things like that. God speaks words of warning to Christians, which are just as relevant today as they were in the 7th century.

Oh, well, then that's very, very important. Very, very important.

Because, why? Think about it for just a moment.

Let me play it again so you can hear what he said. God speaks words of warning to Christians, which are just as relevant today as they were in the 7th century.

So those people who try to find a way of saying, well, no, that stuff in Surah 4 and 5, it's really not about Christians.

Those misrepresentations really aren't about Christians. Well, Paul Williams say they are about a Christian. People of the book, do not go to excess in your religion and do not say anything about God except the truth.

The Messiah, Jesus, the Son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God. His word directed to Mary, a spirit from Him.

So believe in God and His messengers and do not speak of a trinity. Stop every session. It's amazing he uses

Yusuf Ali translation there. Does he not know the word trinity is not there? Does he not know it's the word three?

God is the only God. He is far above having a son. Everything in the heavens we know belongs to Him and He is the best one to trust.

And when, it also says in Surah 5, verse 116, and when Allah would say, O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, take me as my mother, as deity beside Allah?

He would say, exalted are you. It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, you would have known it.

You know what is within myself and I do not know what is within yourself. There is none of the unseen.

So, according to Paul Williams, Surah 5, verse 116 is about the Christian doctrine of the trinity and therefore, very clearly, the author of the

Quran did not understand the trinity and it's okay to misrepresent Christianity. But we've been listening to that for quite some time already.

Okay, so there is the entire opening presentation.

Now, then we got into the Chris Green response and I'm gonna skip down here because I think this is where this happened.

Chris Green made a major tactical blunder and the major tactical blunder was, first of all, when you have a rebuttal period, you do not address your opponent and ask them to answer questions or invite them to give a, just give me a yes or no answer.

Everyone who's ever tried that, I just sat there and kept writing my notes. I looked up at them and just sort of looked at them like, you're wasting your time.

That's not how this works. When it gets cross -examination, if you wanna ask questions, that's fine.

This is your rebuttal period. You're losing the debate here. But Chris Green, I think he said it was his first debate.

Okay. He turned to Paul Williams and I think this is, let me see if I got this right here.

His archaeology turning stuff up along the way. Second, I think he dazzled you over the issue of how many books are in the

Bible. Yes? Let me tell you. I, as an evangelical Protestant, say there are 27 books in the

New Testament. Paul, how many would the Pope say are in the New Testament? Now, he turns to Paul and he says, how many would the

Pope say are in the New Testament? Now, what he's doing here is he's demonstrating that there is a consistency between Protestants and Catholics as to the number of books in the

New Testament and that the difference is over the Deuterocanonical books in the

Old Testament. And he's inviting, now if Paul was to be even slightly honest here, he's going to go 27 because he knows what

Pope we're talking about. He knows what the issue is here, but he dissembles.

He, well, listen. Uh, which Pope? The current Pope. Because the

Ethiopian Pope says there are 81. No, my question was about the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation.

Now, I asked you about the current Pope in Rome. How many books are in the

New Testament, according to him? Sorry, well. Yes, I did say which

Pope. I said the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome. Yes, yes, I think I'm, well. Okay, I clarify it now.

I mean the current Pope in Rome, Pope Clement, Pope Benedict. No, answer my question, mate.

How many books in the New, sorry. That's okay, Paul, I'm very sorry.

Would you please tell me how many books are in the New Testament, according to the Pope? Yes. Yeah, how long did that take?

That was just so childish on William's part that it's just, you just want to, it's unbelievable.

Talk about childishness. Well, the Ethiopian Pope, 81 books.

He asked what the Pope thought about the New Testament. It was clear, it was obvious.

But the mistake was made by Chris Green. You don't hand the floor over to your opponent during your rebuttal period.

All you had to do was say, well, actually, folks, there is unanimity on these issues and address the very small variations amongst other people.

And if you want, then draw a parallel to Ubay ibn Kab and Abdul ibn Masud and differences in numbers of ayahs and you move on from there.

That's how it works. Now, we're supposed to have music going on right now, but unfortunately, I don't hear any music.

This is gonna become a little bit more than a jumbo dividing line. But we're gonna wrap up here and hopefully what's gonna happen is next time on the program, the materials from the new debate will be available and hopefully

I will have had time to listen to it. Maybe, we'll see, we'll find out. But again, if you are in the

St. Charles area, we're heading your direction tomorrow, tomorrow night at Covenant of Grace Church looking at the

Doctrine of the Trinity. Friday night, all day Saturday, preaching Sunday morning for the church and then doing

Sunday evening as well. This will be the first time we've ever done that. I'm really looking forward to that. I just wish it was gonna be cold back there.

It's gonna be like 70. I was looking forward to that. That's when I get some nice cold weather, but I'm not gonna get it this time.

Oh, well, we're still looking forward to the time we're gonna have with the saints there. We'll see you then. See you next week. God bless.

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