Christianity and Islam, Session 4

I recognize that if I wanted to have a big, large ministry, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now. There are so many topics that would be significantly more exciting to people than talking about Islam and the issues that I deal with in talking about Islam, such as the reliability of the text of the New Testament, or the concept of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, or the historical reliability of the crucifixion.

If I were doing seminars on biblical prophecy and how Obama adds up to 666 or something like that, your church would not even be able to hold, with the balcony open, the number of people that would come.

The Reliability of the New Testament and the Limits of Popular Prophecy

But I don't do that, and besides that, the two earliest papyri manuscripts we have of the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 13, don't say 666. Did you know that? Some of you do. It reads 616. So I will leave that to your own pastor to decide what that means.

I never interpret that. I just let you know, and we move on from there. But anyway, so I really appreciate the spirit that you've had, the questions that you've been asking during the breaks have been very, very good, and have been very insightful, and you've been listening, and I appreciate that, even though I think most of you would probably have to admit that when you came in here, you were like, well, there are a few other subjects that he talks about that I'd rather be hearing him address today, but hey, we'll humor him.

Hopefully you can see that I'm passionate about this subject, and certainly many of the issues that we're talking about are directly relevant to other areas. If you are prepared to defend the veracity of the text of the New Testament against the Muslim onslaughts against that, then you're probably already familiar with Bart Ehrman and the atheist attacks and things like that.

If you know something about church history and the early history of the Christians and what they believed, then you're already prepared to be dealing with other areas of apologetics. So it's all related.

But I certainly think that, especially for Christians today, you cannot turn on your television without hearing something about Islam. And so we should not be getting our information from the CBC or from Fox News or MSNBC or whatever the other outlets are.

We should have a theological understanding of what the issues are with Islam. And I am personally afraid that one of the biggest problems we have in Western culture is that our leaders, being secular humanists, likewise do not have a proper understanding of Islam, and hence they cannot understand the varieties of Islam.

They tend to treat it as a one monolithic group, just as many Christians do, and that's improper, it's inappropriate, it won't really help us to accomplish anything in the long run. Now, I narrated a hadith.

What we were going to do in this last section, and just simply because of time I'm sort of mixing it up, is, as I said, one of the things that I've found to be rather interesting is I have…. I've had the opportunity of talking to a number of Muslims and, for example, the last two cab rides I took were with Muslim cabbies.

And when I started to narrate hadith to them, they were amazed. They had never had a Christian scholar in their cab that had taken the time to read the Qur 'an and to learn Islamic history and to then narrate hadith to them, and so we ended up having wonderful conversations, and when I got out of the car they were asking for my YouTube channel, they wanted to see the debates and things like that.

What we're going to do is narrate some of those stories, and I will do that, but I want to continue, I want to finish this presentation and fit in some of the narrations as a part of that so that it all sort of has some coherence to it and you can understand where we're going.

So I just finished the story found in the hadith literature of the man who had killed 100 people, and yet he was allowed to go into paradise. There are some other stories. One of them that is found in both Bukhari and Muslim that I like to include just for the ladies in the audience is, I was shown the hellfire and that the majority of its dwellers are women.

Just thought I would share that with you. Doesn't have any particular application, but of course you may be wondering why that is. The answer that was given is very, very interesting when the question was asked of Muhammad according again to the hadith literature, and I keep saying that because I am aware of the fact that there are modern westernized Muslims.

I just read a book, for example, the name of the author is escaping me off the top of my head, but asking that a new way of evaluating hadith be adopted, and he really rejected a large number of what are called universally accepted hadith that are the very foundation of the Sunnah of Islam, so he would not be very popular in Islamic countries.

But I am aware that there are scholars out there that are arguing for a much reduced canon of the things that could be actually fairly attributed to Muhammad, but in the literature that exists now, certainly within the orthodox Sunni understanding today, the answer that was given by Muhammad was twofold, that women, their testimony in the court of law is not equal to that of a man, and that there is one time during the month when they cannot pray, and therefore that's why the majority of its dwellers of hellfire are women.

Now, of course, if I had been a Muslim woman and gotten an answer like that, I would have said, but those are your rules, not ours, you know, how does that work, but that's not how it happened. The issue of hellfire, however, is very, very important.

Hadith, Hellfire, and the Problem of Assurance

I want to show you something here. There's no audio on this, so don't worry about trying to find the audio, it's okay. This is June 30th, 2007, Glasgow Airport in Scotland. Now what you're going to see here is you're going to see a Jeep Cherokee that has driven into the doorway of the airport.

You can see the people here running away from the check-in counters, they're being evacuated out of the airport. And what happened that day was two men drove a Jeep Cherokee into that door. Oh, okay, sorry.

I guess we were using the pulpit mic there and I walked away from it, okay. Must have slipped off when I put it in my pocket. They drove that vehicle into the doorway and then pressed a button, they had filled the vehicle with canisters of flammable liquid and they assumed it would explode and shoot this huge fireball into that area where you saw the people at the check-in counters.

The only two people who actually died in the explosion were the two men in the vehicle and unfortunately it took them about three weeks to die, which is a really bad way to go, obviously. Now, we look at something like this and for me, it catches my attention first and foremost because I have walked through those very doors many times.

Starting in 2005, I began ministering at a Reformed Baptist Church in Annie's Land, which is one of the suburbs of Glasgow. Jim Handyside and his wife Chrissy, the pastor there at the church, and so I immediately called Jim to see if he was okay because he frequently goes through the airport.

I was there just a few years ago again and obviously all the damage is fixed and things like that. But when you see a place attack that you've been, it sort of hits you a little bit harder. But when I think about this particular incident, you think about those two men and we asked the question, well, what would cause someone to do this?

And very frequently, the mindset amongst Westerners is that, well, these guys must have been down and outers. They must have been, you know, maybe they got some money from some government for doing some act of jihad or something and they sent it to their families or had it sent to their families or something.

You know, there's all sorts of theories. But what really struck me about this particular incident is that the two men in that vehicle were National Health System physicians. They were doctors. Doctors trained to heal bodies and yet they reached down together and pressed a button that caused that vehicle to explode in flames, thinking that that was going to kill many other people other than themselves.

And you ask the question, why? You ask the question, why? And that leads us to the final considerations that we have here. I think part of the reason can be found in one of the, I think, most important hadith that is out there.

In the hadith, we are told about the Day of Judgment. There are a lot of stories about the Day of Judgment. One of the stories is that, again, told in many different forms, is that at the Day of Judgment, there will be something called a Sirat, a bridge that goes over hell.

And interestingly, in many, I think it's pretty difficult to read the hadith without coming to the conclusion that, at least in the majority of those stories, there will be Muslims who actually go to hell for a period of time.

And I'll explain that a little bit more later on. Not so much in a purgatory sense, in a purgation sense, but we'll talk about that. But one of the stories that Muhammad told was of a Sirat, a bridge that extends over hell, and that part of going to paradise is crossing this bridge, but the bridge is razor thin.

It is razor thin. And so, to get across it, the more iman you have, the more faith you have, the more light you have to cross over it. And so the people who have great faith just go shooting straight across it.

And they have no problem getting over to the other side. But then the less and less faith you have, the less and less light you have, until finally you get down to the people who have just a small amount of faith.

And they're literally crawling across this. And Muhammad described these great thorns, these great branches of thorns that would catch people and pull them off and pull them down into hell. And it all depended on how much faith you had as to whether you're going to get across this bridge or not.

And so there's vivid, vivid pictures of hell. And interestingly enough, as I'm saying these, I still haven't gotten to the one, and I'm really worried I'm going to forget about it now. But as I think of one, another one pops into my mind, another one, another one.

There's another, there's just this vivid pictures of hell. For example, there's a suicide. A person who kills himself. There are a number of Hadith stories about the person who kills himself will walk through hell, re-killing himself with whatever instrument he used.

So if he stabbed himself, he will spend eternity stabbing himself with that instrument in the hellfire itself, which is really amazing. But one of the most troubling stories, which is one of them that this book I read recently rejected on other grounds, that is very often told, is the fact that there will be people who, remember I told you, your destiny is written down for you.

And there will be people who will do the works of the people of paradise. So in other words, they live godly lives, they live righteous lives. They will do the works of the people of paradise until they're a hand's breadth away from entering in, and then what is written for them will overcome them, and they will go to hell.

They will go to the fire. Because it was written for them that they would go to the hellfire. So even though they live the life of doing the works of the people of paradise, and they're just about to enter in, what's written for them overpowers them, and they end up in hell.

And in the same Hadith, there are people who live the life of the people of the hellfire. They live an unrighteous existence until they're a hand's breadth away from going into the fire, and then what was written for them will overcome them, and they go to paradise.

And so there's no connection, in that understanding anyways, between what one does and where one ends up. It's what was written for oneself. Now believe me, the Hadith are not consistent with themselves.

The reason you have so many divisions, and you have, you know, this scholar says this, and this school says that, and that school says that, and they get into fistfights at Al-Azhar University and stuff like that, is because the Hadith are not consistent with themselves.

They're just not. You can interpret them in many different ways, and so liberal Muslims will look at certain Hadith, and they'll give them certain value, and conservative Muslims will give other Hadith this value, and they'll put them over the other Hadith, and that's one of the things that really concerns me, is that when people ask, well, does Islam itself contain within itself the ability to, for example, argue against and end the violence, the people, well, doing things like this, driving vehicles into doorways and exploding them, and flying planes into buildings, and things like that, does Islam contain within its own structure the ability to banish that kind of thinking?

The only answer I can give is no. That's my concern. I mean, I wish my moderate Muslim friends well in arguing their case, but what sources do they have to go to to argue their case? They have to go to an inconsistent set of materials that really functionally become more important than the Quran.

Why? Because they become the lens through which the Quran is interpreted. As I said, it's not like, when we can go to the New Testament, and I can argue very clearly that there is not only this consistent message, but I can argue on the basis of the language, and the syntax, and the context, and so on and so forth, I can argue very persuasively for a particular understanding of those documents.

Very frequently, the Quran just doesn't provide you with that kind of background information. It's just not there. And so you have to have, functionally over the course of the development of Islamic theology, the hadith and the understanding of the hadith has determined how it's interpreted, and how you have to understand it.

But the problem is, the hadith themselves are not consistent. You can find certain hadith that say one thing, and certain hadith that say another thing, and there just isn't the consistency there that I can see that will allow the moderates to get rid of the Osama bin Laden's in the world, because look, Osama bin Laden, he went to the text with certain presuppositions.

He has his hadith sources that he can cite, and the other side has their hadith sources that they can cite, and there's this disagreement, but I don't know that one side can forever banish the others.

That's a great amount of concern for me. And so I understand why there are Muslims that want to go, well, I know that hadith is sahih, I know what it sounds, I know it has a sound, it's not a chain, but what it says, I don't agree with.

I don't agree with the idea that you could do the works of the people of paradise until you're a hand's breadth away from entering in, and then what's written for you will overtake you and you go to the fire.

And you can come up with your arguments for that. That's fine and dandy, but that's the problem we're facing. Anyway, going back to this situation up here. Theology matters. I think Al Mohler stole that from me.

I'm thinking about talking to him about it, because I can document using that as a phrase before I started hearing it appearing very regularly in the briefing. But he's a much smarter man than I am, so I'll let him do whatever he wants.

As long as he doesn't tell me, I can't keep using the phrase, theology matters. When I look at that image, what I see is theology. What I see is theology. Why? Because what you have is you have a creator God, you have a God who is holy, he is transcendent, he is powerful, he is just, he has revealed his law, the Sharia.

I don't know what's funny about that, but somebody found it humorous. He has revealed his law, and yet, and yet, you have the assertions of the Quran that he's merciful, awe-forgiving, why won't people repent?

Okay, that's there too. But what you're missing is the one thing that Christianity presents to the Muslim people. A mediator. A mediator. A go-between. One who actually can take hold of both sides. The God-man.

That has been rejected. We've seen it rejected in Surah 4, we've seen it rejected in Surah 3, Surah 5. There are other places we didn't even look at, because we don't have time to actually go through all of it.

But the idea of Jesus as understood by Christians and as taught in the Christian scriptures long before Muhammad ever came along, that idea is rejected. So there is no mediator, and I say to you, that's why that car is on fire.

Because there's no mediator. Now let me tell you one of the stories, and you can see how this relates. This is a Mutawatir hadith. It's a universally accepted hadith. I mean, if you're a Sunni Muslim, and you're an orthodox Sunni Muslim, you can't dispute this particular hadith, it's there.

There's no question about it, it is sahih, it has numerous chains of narration, etc., etc. The story is told a number of times, of the Day of Judgment. And on the Day of Judgment, Allah is wrath. He is angry.

And the human race is greatly filled with fear at the judgment of God. And so they go to Adam. And they say to Adam, we have never seen our Lord this angry before. Intercede with us. You were the first man, intercede for us before Allah.

And Allah says, I've never seen God this angry before either. But this is not for me to do. I sinned, and we were, you saw what happened as a result of my sins. This is not for me to do. Go to Abraham.

I'm sorry, go to Noah. And so they go to Noah. And Noah says, I've never seen God this angry before. And I sinned as well. Now it's interesting, the Quran, Muslims don't think that prophets sin the way that we recognize prophets sin.

Most Muslims view the value of the scripture that comes through someone as being connected to their moral character. And so the Quran will deny the incidents of sin that the Old Testament records regarding Noah, regarding Solomon, for example, will deny those things actually took place.

Because they were prophets, and so they could not have been that corrupt, that morally corrupt. And so, for example, it's really interesting in the Quran, the sin of David and Bathsheba is gone, but Nathan still comes to David and calls him to repentance.

It's really interesting. Nathan's still there. But why? We don't know. Because David wouldn't have done what the Old Testament says he actually did in the death of Uriah and the adultery with Bathsheba and so on and so forth.

So there is this cleaning up of things because there is a fundamentally different view of the nature of sin and the depravity of man within Islamic thought and certainly within the thought of the writer of the Quran.

So they come to Noah, and Noah admits that he has sinned, and so it's not for him to do this. And so he says, go to Abraham. And so they go to Abraham, but Abraham likewise says, this is not for me to do.

Go to Jesus. And when they come to Jesus, two things to recognize. First of all, Jesus doesn't say anything about his sin. Most Muslims would accept that Jesus was sinless. So he doesn't say anything about his sin.

But it just tears my heart out when I read the Hadith saying, this is not for me to do. Because that's exactly what it is for Jesus to do. That's exactly what it is for Jesus to do. That's what he taught.

That's what he said. And this is where the ignorance of the writer of the Quran comes to full fruition. Because here in the Hadith, it is said, that's not for me to do. Go to Muhammad. Go to Muhammad.

And so they go to Muhammad. And it's interesting, I have encountered a number of Muslims who have said that Muhammad was sinless. I'm not sure how you'd get there. Because there's clear evidence both in the Quran and in the Hadith of the forgiveness of his sins.

So I'm not really sure the mindset there. But they come to Muhammad. And Muhammad says, this is for me to do. And so he goes before Allah. And he is taught a special way of worship. I get the feeling from reading it that it's a way of worship that has never been revealed to men before.

And again, the stories are somewhat different amongst themselves. But Muhammad intercedes before Allah. And he intercedes, however, only for his Ummah, for his people. For those who have said, la ilaha illallah.

And each time that he goes before Allah and intercedes, some of his people are taken out of the hellfire and enter into paradise. And he does this three or four times until the last one who has ever said la ilaha illallah is brought out of the hellfire, who had any iman at all, is removed from the hellfire and enter into paradise.

And so there's two ways in which Muhammad is given a special role of intercession. This intercession for his Ummah, resulting in them all entering into paradise. And then remember what the other one was?

The minor intercession that he had for his uncle Abu Talib. Those are the two intercessory roles. But you notice how there is a sense within even the Islamic heart, there needs to be someone who can intercede for us.

There needs to be someone who can stand in the gap. And since the role of the Messiah, out of Isaiah 53, is denied by Islam, and the author of the Quran did not understand it, as I said, there's no evidence.

Show me someplace in the Quran where the function of the Messiah, as laid out in Isaiah 53, is understood. It's not there. It's not there. Muhammad may have known a lot of Jewish stories, but he did not understand what the Messiah was to be and how the Messiah was to function.

And so because that's gone, then there is a vacuum, which is very frequently filled with the exaltation of Muhammad. And a number of my Salafi friends have put out books, put out sermons and things against the over-exaltation of Muhammad, the celebration of Muhammad's birthday, seeking the intercession of Muhammad in prayer, things like that.

Why does this happen? Because there is a need for a mediator. Because there is a need for an intercessor. And because when you look to the Hadith, you can find both assurances of finding Allah's forgiveness as well as the opposite.

For example, there are stories in the Hadith of some of the companions who would be considered to be especially holy people, and yet as their death approached, they cried because they did not have assurance that they would enter into paradise.

And yet, at the same time, there's another story in the Hadith that's told of a man who was brought before Allah on the Day of Judgment, and 99 scrolls, 99 keeps coming up, you notice that? 99 scrolls of his sins are brought forward, and they're big honking scrolls, and they're put on the scale.

And Allah says to the man, are these all your works? Did you do all these things? And the man says, yes, you're not being unjust to me, I did all of those things. So Allah says, do you have anything to put over here, on the other side of the scales?

And the man says, no. And Allah says, yes, you do, I do, yeah. And a little, one little piece of paper is brought, one little piece of parchment, and it's placed on the other side of the scales, and that one little piece of parchment lifts the 99 scrolls up, it outweighs them.

Anybody want to guess what's on that one piece of scroll? The Shahada, La ilaha illallah. You can find places in the Hadith where anyone who has truly said the Shahada will enter into paradise. You can find them, they're there.

So why is that happening? Why is that happening? Well, because there are entire schools of interpretation that will say, yeah, that story is there, but it was only relevant for that guy. That was an actual historical story.

There was one guy, that happened for him, but you can't expect that to happen for you. There is an arbitrariness in the concept of forgiveness. You cannot, since you do not have a mediator, you cannot be assured of it unless you die in jihad.

And that's what those guys believed. And that's why they felt they needed to do what they did, because there's no mediator. There's no one who goes between. And folks, that's why I'm saying to you, we have a message, but unfortunately, can I speak to Christians for a moment?

Very often, the message that we present is not the message of the New Testament. It's a message of our own emotional tradition. Most of the time when we talk about the cross, we don't talk about it the way the New Testament does.

We talk about it the way we learned to talk about it in Sunday school. Well, it's good to talk about the cross in Sunday school, but we can't stay there. The cross is not a sentimental, gooey place. The message of the cross is a message of power, not of sentimentality.

And so many evangelicals have turned the cross into nothing more than a way of pulling at someone's heartstrings, rather than proclaiming a finished work. If when you look at the cross, you do not see the wrath, holiness, and power of God, you are not looking at the cross.

And there's many people who say, oh, I just see the love of God at the cross. Well, the fact of the matter is, when you recognize the holiness of God and the wrath of God against sin, that is the absolutely necessary precondition to understand what's going on at the cross, only then can you really understand the depth of the love of God seen at the cross.

If you do not understand that this is the vindication of God's law, this is the demonstration of God's wrath against sin, then you don't understand the cross. And may I say something to all of us who live in a society that hates the cross?

You say, what do you mean hates the cross? Every time our society says to you and me, shut up about God's moral law. Stop talking about God's moral law. Stop talking about the fact that Jesus taught about what marriage actually is.

Don't talk about God's sexual ethics. Don't talk about these things. What the world is saying to you is, do not bow before the lordship of Jesus Christ. Stop believing in the cross. Because you see, if we can't talk about the sin that brought about the cross, then we can't talk about the redemption that the cross brings.

And that's what our society is saying to every one of us every single day. And very many of us are backing off. Very many of us are backing away. And saying, well, I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to be politically incorrect.

Don't want to end up losing my job. The fact of the matter is, the teaching of the New Testament is very clear. The death of Jesus Christ was absolutely voluntary. It was in harmony with the Father and the Spirit.

The Father, Son, and Spirit together in eternity past determined that it was going to be in this way that God was going to glorify himself in the redemption of a particular people. And through the work of that cross, you have the vindication of God's holiness.

There is no injustice with God. No injustice with God. There is not a single sin that will not be punished. Either in the substitute or in the one who committed it. God's law will be vindicated. God's justice will be demonstrated.

But the incredible message is, in the midst of that, God's love and mercy will be demonstrated for all. Because God in the person of his Son will provide the perfect substitute in Jesus Christ. And it's because that was never understood by a man in Mecca all those years ago.

There's the result. Theology matters. You and I are the only people that can bring that message to the Muslim people. Ladies, many a Muslim woman will not talk to me. Culturally, religiously, I will not have the opportunity to speak to them.

That you do have. That you do have. So ladies, may I challenge you to know what your gospel says about the cross. To know what your Bible says about the deity of Christ. Why are we so hung up on the deity of Christ?

Couldn't we just sort of leave that to the side? No, my friends, because you see, just as the cross is the very center point of history, so too Jesus had to be the God-man to do what he did upon that cross.

To be that one unique person. So that one time and that one place and that one unique person, all the wrath of God and all the love and mercy of God meet in one place. He had to be the God-man, the Prince of Peace, El Gabor, the Mighty God, to be able to provide that sacrifice at that one place at that one time.

So could I suggest to every single one of you, that one of the, if you can't, if it's not just something, well, I want to know these things, I want to be passionate about my faith. If that's not there, then at least to be ready to give an answer that's within you, could I suggest to each one of us, we need to know our faith a whole lot better.

We need to know our faith so that we will have confidence to be able to engage the objections and the questions and not hesitate when the opportunity comes up. We spend so much of our time and so much of our effort learning so many other things that when we die we'll become irrelevant.

And yet every moment we spend knowing our faith, learning our faith, is something that can have absolutely eternal consequences. Eternal consequences. A few years ago I stood in a Baptist church in London.

Only a few stops on the tube. Wonderful transportation system, I must say. How many of you have traveled in London? Okay. I have an Oyster card. Do you know what an Oyster card is? That's the thing. I don't have to pay.

Well, I do pay. I have to put money on it. But that's the thing. You just swipe. Any true Londoner has an Oyster card. That's when I became a Londoner, is when I got my Oyster card. And I was at a church that was about two stops down from where one of the 7 -7 bombings took place.

Remember the 7 -7 bombings? In the United States we had 9 -11. And in London they had 7 -7. And that was where all these bombings took place. Coordinated bombings on triple-decker buses and in the tube.

I cannot imagine what that was like in the tube. I mean, I just did some unbelievable radio broadcasts. That's the name of the show. In London a few weeks ago. And I had to travel into London from Heathrow on the tube.

And as I was riding I just thought, what would it be like? Oh my goodness. It must have just been so terrible. But I was just a few stops away from where one of those had happened. And I was debating a pretty raucous Muslim apologist.

I've gotten to know him better since then. We have a better relationship now, I think. And I don't think it would be quite as raucous as it was then. But he goes over to Speaker's Corner. And at Speaker's Corner you have to be able to yell and scream pretty loud to get your points across.

So we were debating whether the Quran misrepresents the doctrine of the Trinity. And his name is Adnan Rashid. And Adnan had made a pretty strong presentation. And it came my turn to get up. And many of the ladies were in full burqa, full garb.

All you could see were their eyes. And there was a sort of natural segregation in the audience. The Christians were on this side, the Muslims were on that side. No one said to do that. It just sort of happened, unfortunately.

And the thought had crossed my mind. When the time came, would I be able to say what I needed to say? Would I shrink back? Would I compromise? You know, far away from home, in a context like that. And when I got up for my rebuttal, I sort of ignored the Christians.

Sorry about that. I sometimes do that. I figure, you've got the Holy Spirit, you've got all you need. And I sort of turned toward the Muslims. And I started preaching. And I looked at them, and I said, Look, there is no question about what was written 500 years before Muhammad came along.

In those scriptures, it was written that Jesus Christ is the Lord of all. Thomas said to Jesus, My Lord and my God. The early Christians were recognized as those people who called upon the name of the Lord.

That means to pray to Jesus. They worshipped Him. And when they described Him, one description that was given of Him goes like this. For by Him were all things made. Heaven and earth, visible, invisible.

Principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities. All things are created by Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things. They hold together. That's the Creator. And if those words are true, then you cannot say that Jesus is a mere Rasul.

In fact, I say to every Muslim in this room, to every person in this room, that every breath of your mouth, every beat of your heart, comes from His hand. He is your Maker. He is your Creator. And to provide the perfect way of peace with a holy God, He entered into His own creation and lived a perfect life.

And then He died a sacrificial death so that anyone, anyone who turns in repentance and faith toward Him can have remission of sins and eternal life. You cannot be neutral about that message. And Muslims aren't really sure what to do with that.

Because unfortunately, most of what they hear from Christians is that picture of Jesus holding the little lamb, standing outside a noblest door, knocking. Well, as far as that picture shows Jesus' love, okay, but that is not the New Testament Jesus.

The Jesus of the New Testament includes the picture of Jesus in the book of Revelation. He has a sword coming from His mouth and He will rule the nations with a rod of iron. And when you recognize the power of Jesus, when you recognize that He could have with a word called this entire universe out of existence, but He restrained that power and put that hand upon the cross.

That's power. But that's power to bring about His own glorification, the glorification, the triune God, and the salvation of a special people who will trust and believe in Him. When they hear that message, that's different than, fortunately, what they normally hear from Christians.

We need to give them the whole Jesus, just as we give them the whole gospel. Now, I ask you to forgive me for starting to preach, but I don't do what I do out of some kind of enjoyment of arguing. If I never had to argue again, that would be great.