9/12/2013 The Dividing Line Moving Back to Yusuf Ismail

here is james white and welcome to the dividing line on a thursday afternoon uh...

it's it's always funny stuff that pops up right as the program is starting and this is actually a uh...

this was retweeted by gary sinise interestingly enough from general electric and uh...

i just find this stuff fascinating eleven point seven billion miles from home the g e powered voyager one is the first spacecraft to leave the solar system and so voyager one has has left the building and uh...

we all know what happens to voyager one it becomes Vee -ger and it becomes a big ol' honkin' thing and uh...

that's great that's wonderful some of you have no idea what i'm talking about it's okay you don't have to know uh...

but it demonstrates that you're not really a true geek or a trekkie if you don't know who or what

Vee -ger is anyhow i thought that was rather interesting welcome to the program first and foremost many uh...

thanks to all the people who made uh... the past uh... week or so possible i left a little over a week ago to head to atlanta on uh...

saturday evening i uh... visited with uh... the freakishly tall

Todd Friel and uh... we recorded an episode of uh...

wretched tv on uh... basically i just did my new test reliability presentation that many of you have seen in various and sundry places and uh...

so uh... what's going on here we're having lots of problems aren't we not really the video stream's great but our normal audio stream is now dead why well it sorta uh...

conflicts with the other thing it wanted the sound card for itself so what about all the people who are used to listening to the audio uh...

they're getting directed to the video right now that's not good that's not good we gotta find a way to fix that well i'll work on it because there's people in other lands this is very new there's people in ukraine who are not going to be able to watch the video right now we have our normal amount of uh...

viewers that would normally be listening already how about that okay alright so there okay well uh...

i'd put something up on the blog uh... immediately a post -taste like right now uh...

directing folks to that and uh... we need to need to tweet something so i can retweet it so like i'm not sure what cave you've been living in but uh...

it's been all over twitter all day to your account that doesn't matter it's been on your blog that does not matter we need something on twitter that i can retweet so that folks who normally would be listening are going where'd you go i'm on it okay let's do that one right now so i can retweet that one okay well we've got things going on you know and uh...

that's just the way that happens so hopefully we're still recording and stuff and we'll be able to put it in itunes and not leave those of you who are ipod listeners completely out in the cold here uh...

because that's how i listen to so much stuff too most people cannot listen live simply because we keep moving it all over the place to fit my schedule so anyways i wanted to get back to this story there we did the program with Todd Freel i do i do want to apologize for having not noticed the sewer roach on the wall behind me uh...

evidently for the last 45 minutes or so of the program there was a very large sewer roach running about on the wall uh...

behind me distracting some of the people down front um... i was not looking behind me and so i did not notice it and one of the most hilarious things i do hope someday there will be an outtake video of this because it does exist somewhere was when uh...

when uh... the freakishly tall Todd Freel attempted to kill the roach uh...

it ended up behind it ended up behind his functional um...

uh... hand cleanser dispenser on the wall uh... and then he got it onto the ground and then we have a wonderful video of Todd Freel dancing in the spirit uh...

as he attempts to kill the sewer roach and eventually over toward his desk you hear a sickening crunch uh...

and the sewer roach and its guts were left on the floor for the rest of the presentation so haha uh...

it was an interesting experience let's just put it that way and uh... so we're looking forward to them making available the uh...

new test reliability presentation and the questions that we had and stuff like that it went real well real well uh...

then i was uh... had the wonderful opportunity of uh... visiting the new church where uh...

my uh... son -in -law and daughter go and my wonderful granddaughter clementine when clementine showed up i just grabbed her and started walking around the church and i discovered that she is the most popular baby in the world uh...

nobody cared about me but everyone's going hi clementine hi clementine because she is so stinking cute and so when time came for me to go up front to speak uh...

i uh... i just took her with me and i went up front holding a clementine and uh...

that makes me look uh... actually makes me look like i have a heart everybody knows i don't uh...

anyone who has read anything about me on the internet knows that i'm a completely heartless uh...

automaton uh... that just uh... rips people to shreds right left and center just the fun of it that's that's me uh...

so it's a complete ruse that i would walk around carrying my granddaughter with me uh...

but uh... but i did and uh... she smiled at everybody and uh... that was that was cool and uh...

so uh... anyway i've been gay for summer and summer took her back to the nursery and uh...

i did uh... my presentation on islam a pretty much same presentation that i did last evening at first baptist church in lindale on wednesday night had a really good crowd there but what most of you are probably wondering about uh...

is uh... yeah there is a there is a dwarf in the background uh...

we're gonna have to think about what's in the background now with video i hadn't really thought about that uh...

uh... that that was uh... what was the what was the story there barry and katie gave that to me it's reading a book as i recall i don't remember what the whole story was uh...

about that but and then there's a picture of me and notice that it's me and my wife and i'm in uh...

i'm in my kilt that's my uh... buchanan clan kilt the microphone i'm gonna have to move the microphone to cover the dwarf is that what you're saying it's in the way of the picture oh oh okay there's there there we go there's now you can see okay good well that's not gonna really do any good anyways um we'll just have to move stuff around back there maybe i'll just start putting different stuff back there to subliminally sublims yeah subliminally there you go uh communicate something can you see the uh can you see the thing next to the dwarf can't really make it out oh that's that's one of my really cool um flashy thingies um here here now everybody can watch can you see that oh cool alright it's one of my little lightning um dookie whopper thingies um and i'll have to have that on in the future that's really cool and it's got it's got uh mirrors on it and stuff there's only actually one thing but then it's got mirror things on it and uh anyhow what was i talking about oh yeah um most of you are probably wondering this is gonna be a real distraction a real distraction there's no two ways about it uh they don't they don't have classes on how to handle one of those things um when you're uh i i i do need to get a lava lamp yeah we need to get a lava lamp now i need to get one of my lava lamps in here um we should have a contest someone should um um someone i need you know my orange one doesn't work anymore i need to get a new orange lava lamp that's what i need to do cause a blue thing and an orange thing that'd be perfect back there so i'll have to get a lava lamp back there it'll make me feel better anyhow actually the reality is that is a that is a mock up uh uh shelf that was never finished i mean it's held together with these little tacks and uh we just stuck it in here cause we didn't have any place else to stick it because we never figured we'd have that and uh it just sorta sits there and um so anyhow what was i talking about oh yeah get uh get down to something serious here obviously the primary reason that i went back there other than to see my beautiful granddaughter clementine uh was uh to go by not the dallas area i discovered lindale is not anywhere near dallas it's a long ways away hour and a half drive um as i found out this morning uh because my flight was at 8 .15

and so anyway um yeah i'll put a couple lava lamps on the ministry resource list so we can put in the background see if anyone buys them for us um and uh the reason that i was i wanna do all of this is after the explosion of tweets from eric and canner a few months ago claiming to be exonerating innocent pure as driven snow et cetera et cetera and which of course contained all sorts of nasty attacks upon yours truly it's funny my critics never mention just how nasty canner can be in attacking people who disagree with him and have exposed him anyway uh i had contacted pastor tom buck and uh cause i knew he was in that area general area and i basically asked him to find a place in dallas where we could do this presentation well we've sort of theorized since then that the reason we couldn't find a place is there wasn't anybody in dallas who wanted to touch this ten foot pole and now we uh now we know why uh that uh took place um i cannot go into details right now i don't know if i'll ever have the freedom to go completely into all the details here but let's just say that um certain folks showed themselves to be willing to do almost anything to try to stop us uh there was great panic in the canner camp as the day drew near as they realized that we were going to be you know up until this point the information against canner has been on this website over here and that website over there and a few videos over here and a few videos over there uh but to put it all in one place and and bring all the strings together and say here is what ergen canner said i mean the primary witness against ergen canner is ergen canner um and though they have done their best to uh diminish the number of sermons that we can cite that are still on the web uh almost all that stuff has already been saved to hard drives and backup systems all over the place and i put together about a um almost two hour presentation uh that brought all this together was focused upon the primary issues there are a lot of things i could have brought up i didn't mention for example the fact that canner can't seem to pronounce the word salm he says salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm salm in the first day, had seen the evidence against Aaron Cantor.

That's pretty impressive. And hopefully that will get the word out even more to, you know, now people will have a resource they can direct people to when they see that Aaron Cantor has been invited to address the youth at such -and -such a place.

Now you can say, Pastor X of such -and -such church, have you seen this?

Could you please, please, for the sake of your people, the sake of your being a shepherd of the sheep, could you please listen to this and get back to me as to why you would allow a man like this who is unrepentant about these activities and these lies that he's told, why you're involving yourself in this way?

And we've gotten a lot of positive stuff. I didn't see the letter that you mentioned to me, you didn't send it to me, but someone sent in a letter that basically said, you know, up until now

I always got upset with you when you started talking about Aaron Cantor, I know that was a waste of time, until I watched the presentation and now

I realize why you've done what you've done and why it's necessary for you to do what you've done.

And that's really, really important to me. We were able, I spent a lot of time putting that together, that presentation together.

I wanted it to be clear, to be orderly, and I wanted it to communicate the central issues primarily, and I think it accomplished all of that, and I'm very thankful for that.

We obviously are going to be, once we get the local video from First Baptist Church Lindale, we're going to be dropping, because what we did for the live feed was they had a camera shooting one of the digital projectors, the screens, and the projectors weren't all that powerful, and so the video quality is rather poor.

Yeah, I was a bit concerned when I first saw it, but you know, the point came across. Well, and as long as you can hear the audio, then you can be able to make out what's going on in the video.

I mean, you can clearly tell that's Ergen Cantor. Yeah, but we're still going to throw, oh yeah, we're going to,

I'm told they're going to get an HD video of it. And then we've got the keynote presentation. We'll drop it all in and make it a real pro presentation, and then we will then put it up on YouTube.

Right, right. So we will have a resource that everyone can be pointed to, and that is what

Ergen Cantor and Arlington Baptist College wanted to avoid. They want us to cancel this thing, and they communicated that very clearly, and I can't talk much more about that right now, but I'll just tell you that Ergen Cantor is already suing one

Christian pastor. Very clearly, there are certain passages of scripture that he doesn't think are relevant whatsoever, and that he will violate with, he thinks, impunity.

So I'll just give you an idea of some of the stuff that's going on in the background in that particular situation, and maybe we'll be able to tell you more about it in the future.

But the fact of the matter is we had some real opposition to get over, and we did it. We stayed the course.

We had to. There just wasn't anything we could do about it. And so that material is available. So my sincere thanks to Pastor Buck and the folks at FBC Lyndale, and we will see what the aftermath of this is going to be.

My hope and prayer is that so much godly pressure will be brought against the

Cantors, that they will finally have to come out, repudiate the excuse sheet that is posted on Norman Geisler's website, that that will finally be removed with apologies to the body of Christ for having inflicted it upon everyone, and that there will be open acknowledgment of the facts concerning Ergin Cantor's history, that he was wrong to claim to speak

Arabic, he was wrong to claim to have been born in Istanbul and raised in Turkey, and that all those sermons he delivered saying,

I came here as I was about to go into university, actually came here before he was three,

I came here having always lived in majority Muslim countries, and my father was a polygamist and was practicing the

Abraham lie, and I had no idea about what

Christians believed, and I thought you hated me and I hated you. How many Christian teachers did

Ergin Cantor have in the Ohio school system? He was surrounded by Christians.

He knew all about Christians. It was the Midwest, for crying out loud, in the early 1970s.

That was back when you could still have Christmas programs, you know, without the

Freedom from Religion Foundation jumping down your throat. Don't give this I thought you hated me stuff.

It's a bunch of baloney, and he knows it. It was all a persona. It was all meant to allow him to make this emotional appeal, and sadly there are some people who go, well, you know, that's good enough for me as long as it was all for Jesus.

Anyway, we demonstrated the point without any question. We demonstrated the reality without any question, but many people have complimented us.

It wasn't a bunch of ad hominem. There wasn't any mockery. It was very, very straightforward. The case is clear.

The case is well documented, and of course, Ergin Cantor could never stand in my presence and defend himself against that information, but here is what

I want to offer. I am offering right now to Ergin Cantor and Arlington Baptist College.

I will come to Arlington Baptist College. I will make my presentation, and then

I will allow Ergin Cantor to respond, and then we can have an hour of cross -examination, him asking me questions,

I asking him questions. I will come to your campus to do that.

Will Ergin Cantor do it? We all know the answer to that. We all know the answer to that, but the challenge and invitation is there.

I know why I have done this, and I know that I've done it with integrity and with honesty.

How about you, Ergin? You know in your heart that I've done so as well. So, I'd be happy to come and do that.

It ain't going to happen, but the offer is there, and anyone who has contact with the folks, if you know anyone who goes to Arlington Baptist College, point them to that information.

They may not be able to watch you on campus. They may have been told to avoid it.

Yes, they did. They had a pep rally in support of Ergin Cantor.

Well, that's how you deal with accusations of problems of integrity. Yeah, have a pep rally.

There you go. Wow. Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing.

So, we'll be working on that video and getting it up and making it available to you. A couple things

I want to get to before we get back to responding to Yusuf Ismail, because the time is very short.

I leave, let's see, today is the 12th, so I leave in 16 days.

Yes, 16 days from now. I'll be flying to London. And then on the 30th of September, in fact,

I need to mention this, I seriously am asking you for your prayers.

In fact, if there are some of you who, for example, your church has a prayer list, you have some intercessory groups, whatever it might be,

I am looking at the schedule that has been lined out for me, and folks, for seven days,

I am talking and debating morning, noon, and night. It is, without a doubt, the most outlandish schedule that has ever been presented to me.

I have now six debates, two with Shabir Ali, two with Yusuf Ismail, one with Bashir Vanya, and one with a gentleman that I know next to nothing about, other than he has been highly insistent that he must debate me,

Yusuf Buxin. There is no way on God's green earth that between now and the 28th,

I can do the kind of preparation I want to be able to do, for six debates, plus two unbelievable radio broadcasts on completely different topics, on Monday the 30th.

I mean, if Ergin Kanner can include a discussion with a Muslim cabbie as a debate, that makes eight debates that I will have that are actual debates.

I don't include the unbelievable stuff in my debate list, but they're fairly broadly listened to programs, and maybe

I should just start throwing them in, because they are very similar to formal debates. But the number of lectures

I'm giving, the range of topics, I am not sufficient for this.

I am not sufficient for this. I am starting to wonder, honestly, if maybe this is why the

Lord has just allowed me over the past two months to be incredibly disciplined.

I am right now in the best physical shape of my life. I mean, Rich will tell you, I am so lean right now, it's unbelievable.

I'm riding huge miles and enjoying it. I'm in really good shape. I'm in really good physical shape, and I'm wondering right now if that's why.

I mean, I can run on a pretty small amount of input right now and a small amount of sleep, because I've been pushing myself so hard to get to that point, and now

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I know why. Because between the 2nd of October and the 9th of October, that seven -day window, aside from traveling 22 ,000 miles in the air,

I am going to be taking on a schedule that I have never attempted anything, even, I don't think

I've ever attempted half this amount of material in the same period of time, not in my entire life. I guess

I'm just celebrating turning 50 in a big way. So what I am asking you to do is, if your church prays for folks, to please pray for those debates and pray for those lectures.

Many of them are going to have to be off the top of my head, in the sense of drawing from 30 years worth of ministry now to, not the debates, but a lot of the lectures.

They are on topics of, I mean, it's, okay, discussing homosexuality in the church. You know, it wasn't that long ago

I debated Justin Lee and things like that. Obviously I can do those things without too much preparation, but obviously just the amount of time

I'm going to be speaking. Obviously the biggest prayer request is,

I need to be healthy during all this. I really, really need to be healthy during all this and need to protect my voice.

There's just no two ways about it, or I'm going to sound like Mike Licona did in that one debate with Bart Ehrman, if you remember that, it was one of the most painful debates to ever listen to.

Somebody's talking like this at the end. It's just really very, very, very hard to follow that particular thing.

So, that's what's coming up. And so, your prayers, your support, extremely, extremely helpful.

Okay, this is a little weird, okay, because now I got this thing. I got the eye, the eye of Sauron over here.

That's what I'm calling it, the eye of Sauron. There it is. It's actually a blue eye, but it does look a little bit like the eye of Sauron.

And then I've got the channel over there. See, the channel's over here. So, when you see me looking down here, this is where the video camera is showing my car, because people like breaking into it, and breaking windows, and doing other things like that.

So, if you ever see me jump up and run out, it's because someone's going after my car. But over here is the chat channel, and up here normally is where I have my, well, right now

I have Pocket, used to be, what was that called, Read Me Later or something like that, or I have the next store

I'm going to be looking at. But over here is Twitter, and here is the chat channel.

And somebody in the channel said, I always imagined Doc standing up and running around while doing the dividing line.

Why did you imagine that, is what I want to know. You're a little strange, just thought

I'd mention that, if that's what you thought I was doing. Anyways, now I can look at you people and go, you're weird.

That's sort of cool. That's sort of a nice thing to be able to say. Oh great, yeah, what do you do, focus in on my eye when

I do that, or something like that? Don't, don't. No, that's, no. I need to put some rules up for this, okay?

In fact, I want a button in here where I can blank it out, okay? I want, just like I have the cough, cough button, so I can turn my feet on and off.

The cough button's right here, by the way. When you see me reach for that, I need to cough. I need,

I need the Sauron off button. That's what I need right there. We'll call it the ring button, or something like that.

So anyhow, what were we talking about? Oh yes, okay.

I do, I wish I had the entire letter in English, but I don't.

Everyone's talking today about the Pope speaking like an inclusivist, and it certainly sounded like it.

I mean, he said, the question for those who do not believe in God is to follow their own conscience.

Sin, even for a non -believer, is when one goes against one's conscience. By the way, that's not a definition of sin.

That's, sin is when one goes against God's will, God's law.

And while the conscience may point to that, sometimes the conscience becomes seared.

And so anyways, to listen and to follow your conscience means that you understand the difference between good and evil.

My conscience doesn't define good and evil. God's law defines good and evil. I mean, here we're having to deal with this guy.

They talked about the mercy of God has no limits, and in one of the articles, this is from the

Independent, in comments likely to enhance his progressive reputation, Pope Francis has written a long open letter to the founder of La Repubblica newspaper,

Eugenio Scalfari, stating that non -believers would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences.

Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr. Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis wrote, you ask me if the

God of the Christians forgives those who don't believe and who don't seek the faith. I start by saying, and this is the fundamental thing, that God's mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart.

The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience. Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.

I tried to find a full English translation of the letter, and I have not been able to find it, and so I would like to read it in context, because as I would hope no one would trust

Fox News, or the Independent, or almost any other media source to quote me correctly, and would go to what

I actually said, in the same way I would like to see these comments in a context.

But at the same time, I'm not sure how many times I've said it, but I've said for a very long time that in my opinion, the majority of the

Roman Catholic priesthood, bishops, priests, cardinals, whatever, if you put all of them together in a room and were to survey them, you would discover that the majority of them are minimally inclusivistic, and many of them are universalistic.

It's been that way for a long time. The problem is, and we talked about this with John Paul, Ratzinger was a little more concise and accurate in his terminology, but one year

John Paul will throw out a bone to the conservatives, and he'll say something really conservative, and the next year he throws out a bone to the liberals, and he's trying to hold this big, massive movement together that really is not unified.

And so you've got to throw stuff out both directions to keep people happy and try to keep the middle in one piece.

And you listen to what was just said here by the Pope, and simple question, simple question, if you had the kind of platform he has, and you wanted to answer these questions, just compare the lack of specificity, the lack of clarity, the political correctness of what the

Pope has said, with the clarity, force, and biblical nature of John MacArthur answering the same question on Larry King.

Just compare them. I mean, when Johnny Mac gets asked that question, as he gets asked that question all the time, when he gets asked that question, is he stuck with this level of jibber -jabber?

Or does he give an answer, and the funny thing is, I just thought of this, the funny thing is,

John MacArthur answers these questions in the words of the

Apostles of Jesus Christ. And here a man who claims to be the head of the

Apostolic See cannot answer in the words of the Apostles of Jesus Christ.

That's a shame, but it's the reality, and it flows from the fact that, of course, the

Pope has not just a deficient understanding of the Gospel, he has a false understanding of the

Gospel. And few there be today who will say that, and who at the same time have done enough reading in Roman Catholic dogmatic theology to know what the

Roman Catholic Gospel is. There are a lot of people who are anti -Catholic in their outlook, but they are so out of prejudice and tradition, not out of conviction, that the

Roman Gospel is false because it fundamentally compromises what is really true, and that is the

Biblical Gospel. And so, I hope,

I would imagine, over the next couple of days, maybe even the next couple of hours, the full text of this letter, which seems to be fairly lengthy, will appear in English, and then we'll have a little bit more of a context to look at.

And I will try to follow that up. I will try to follow that up. I think that will be helpful. Now, another thing, we simply must confess, we have to admit, that in Western cultures today, and I speak of the

United Kingdom, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, the

EU in general, the United States, Canada, Australia.

If we live in those cultures, and we believe that the

Lordship of Jesus Christ should inform every aspect of our lives, we are not like those who simply put the

Lordship of Christ into one little corner, that's our religious life, and then we have our secular life over here.

If we recognize the Lordship of Christ has to be over the entirety of life, we are now second -class citizens.

We are second -class citizens. There is a hierarchy in our society now.

And there are people who have more rights, there are people who can, in essence, have us jailed at the drop of a hat.

And they have the right to do it, and they've been given the power to do it by our culture. Two illustrations of this from very recently.

From September 10th, Fox Sports fires analyst Craig James for past comments on homosexuality.

What did he say? Actually he was moderating a debate. And he, after comments by the people in the debate, said, quote,

I think right now in this country, our moral fiber is sliding down a slope that is going to be hard to stop if we don't stand up with leaders who don't go ride in gay parades.

I can assure you I will never ride in a gay parade. And I hear what you're saying, Tom, but leaders are kids out there.

People need to see examples. There you go. You are not worthy to appear in the holy realm of television.

If you have ever said it. Not if you even still believe it. If you have ever said it, remember the

San Antonio thing? They passed it, but they took some of the language out. It's still really bad, but it's not as bad as it would have been.

Remember the San Antonio legislation would have allowed, would have forbade the city of San Antonio from doing business with anyone who had ever expressed what is defined as a prejudicial attitude about homosexuality.

So if you 20 years ago preached a sermon on the subject of homosexuality and gave a biblical perspective of it, you are out.

You cannot be a part of our culture anymore. To the fringes with you. That's exactly what they wanted.

These people do not believe in free speech. They do not believe in freedom. They do not believe in liberty. They want your freedom and liberty taken away unless you do what?

You rejoice in their perversion. You must call me good.

You must bow before me and kiss my ring. I am superior to you and our society has said, okay, okay, we'll do that.

We'll do that. That's all right with us. Some of you may recall that I have twice now had the wonderful opportunity of going out to Leicester Square in London.

Both times I went out with a young man who preaches on the streets of London and elsewhere.

I don't necessarily like the phrase street preacher because this young man is more than just a street preacher.

He's involved in the church. He's well rounded. He's got theological grounding to him.

He's named Robbie Hughes. He's been in most of the debates

I've done there in London. He's a good man. When I've gone out with Brother Hughes, both times to Leicester Square, what has happened is we've had him.

He gets up. He's got the voice. He starts preaching. Immediately the

Muslims start to become attracted. We told everybody in the group, because what you do is you have the group stand around.

When people start stopping and listening, then they engage in conversation. The plan was that when

Muslims arrive, that they would bring them over to me. That would allow

Robbie to continue preaching to the non -Muslims while I witnessed to the

Muslims. We've done that twice in Leicester Square in the times that I've been there.

Well, about two weeks ago, I think it was two weeks ago today actually, here's from ChristianNews .net,

article by Heather Clark. I'll just read it. A Christian street preacher was arrested and jailed last week in England after he was accused by a lesbian bystander of engaging in hate speech against homosexuals.

The incident occurred on Thursday while Evangelist Rob Hughes was preaching on the streets of Basildon, Essex. As he spoke,

Hughes was approached by police who advised they had received a complaint that Hughes had engaged in hate speech by preaching against homosexuality.

Police advised that such speech was a violation of the Public Order Act, Section 5, which bans, quote, threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behavior, or disorderly behavior, end quote, or the display of, quote, any writing, sign, or other visible representation that is threatening, abusive, or insulting, end quote, with an earshot of sight of a person, quote, likely to be caused harassment, alarm, or distress thereby, end quote.

Remember, this was the basis upon which a Christian, what was it, a bagel shop or something like that, that had one of those, you know, those running text things, and they had the

Bible running. They just had the Bible running. And since it ran through Leviticus, the police showed up. So in other words, in the

UK, you cannot publicly read certain portions of the Bible any longer. In fact,

I would say a large portion of the Bible, when you think about it, because there would be lots of folks that would find the Bible's condemnation of evil to fall under this absurd law.

I continue, as Hughes was interviewed by police on the street, his friend Andrew Noble was also interrogated by officers.

Quote, did you say that homosexuality is sinful, end quote. Noble remembers the police inquiring, quote,

I don't think we said that today, but it is something we would say, end quote, he replied. Noble told Christian News Network that a lesbian bystander had lodged a complaint against Hughes's speech and falsely accused him of speaking against homosexual behavior.

Hughes was arrested on the street and transported to the local jail, where he was then fingerprinted and held in a cell. In the meantime,

Noble contacted the Christian legal organization Christian Concern to request emergency assistance. Seven hours later, at nearly midnight,

Hughes was released and the charges were dismissed. Hughes told Christian Concern that Christian street preachers are facing a situation where they are now becoming, quote, presumed guilty until found to be innocent, end quote.

Quote, this is happening alarmingly often now, Andrea Williams, president of the organization stated in a news release announcing

Hughes' arrest, Rob's experience shows why it's so important that we at Christian Legal Center keep giving legal support to Christians like him who simply want to share the good news of Jesus.

As previously reported, a similar incident occurred in July of this year as American evangelist Tony Miano was arrested and jailed for after speaking against sexual immorality on the streets of London.

Miano states that he was preaching for 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 through 12, when a woman became agitated by his message and began to curse.

I preached about the fact that people are in sin and are violating God's word and his law by engaging in immorality, both heterosexual immorality and homosexual immorality, he explained.

Since he had included homosexuality in his sermon, the woman who had gone into a nearby store and came out to find Miano still speaking, called the police to complain.

Moments later officers arrived, notified Miano that he had allegedly violated section 5 of the Public Order Act. He was placed under arrest and marched down to the police station where he was then questioned about his beliefs.

It was surreal because I was interrogated about my faith in Jesus Christ, Miano said. I was asked if I believe that homosexuality is a sin.

I was asked what portion of the Bible I was reading. I was asked if a homosexual was hungry and walked up to me, would I give him something to eat?

Like Hughes, Miano was released near midnight and went back out on the streets to preach the following day.

As we've said many times, the process is the punishment. What we have here, folks, has anyone else noticed how absolutely childish homosexuals are?

They're childish. Who runs off to the police because someone's, he said something that hurt my feelings, mommy!

Isn't that exactly what they're doing? They know they can get away with it. They could stand there and they could curse a blue streak using words

I would have to look up on Google to even figure out what they meant. They could say anything vile, sexual, just go and listen to the conversations in a gay pride march and you'll see what

I mean and no one will bat an eye. But if you stand upon the street and read from the scriptures, he offended me!

Homosexuality is narcissistic. It's narcissistic. And narcissists tend to be very childlike, very childish, no maturity, no adulthood.

You see, in adulthood, you find out that you don't get everything in life that you just want. There are certain right and wrong things and you learn to change your dreams to fit your reality.

And evidently, they don't get that. And so if someone walks by and, I don't like what you're saying,

I'm going to have you arrested. Well, you know what? They can do that now. It will never happen to them.

They can say anything they want and the police won't touch them and you know it and I know it.

It is hypocrisy, it's a double standard, but it's the reality we face. It's the reality we face. It's here in the

States. This kind of thing could happen right here in the States. I mean, you saw what happened, what was it, two and a half, three months ago?

Some Christians standing at a gay pride march, they've just got signs not saying anything, they're attacked, they're beaten, their signs are torn up.

Cops, where are they? Hmm, I don't know. They're afraid, the police are afraid to do anything because they know that political correctness is the law of the land now.

We are second class citizens. I don't know how long it has been that I have been selling you.

It's been decades, we can prove it. Just go back on the

Wayback Machine, we can go back to at least 1998 and I'll bet somewhere in the Wayback episodes of 1998,

I will say something along the lines of homosexuals do not want equal rights, homosexuals want

Uber rights. You do not have the right to disagree with me.

You do not have the right to express an opinion other than my own. In this area, I rule supreme, bow before me and kiss my ring and it's amazing how many people in Western culture go, okay, okay, whatever you say, just don't get mad at me.

Amazing, amazing. If that isn't the judgment of God, I don't know what is. I don't know what is.

I really, really don't. It is amazing stuff. Okay, well, as I mentioned, we are coming up very quickly on the debates and I think,

I'm not sure, I think my debates with Shabir are going to be the last ones

I do. In one way, that's neat because I am pretty certain, my gut feeling honestly is that these are going to be very substantive but non -aggressive discussions between Shabir and I.

I really am hoping that the interactions that he and I have had in other contexts and hopefully get to have more there will allow us to really be focused upon the real issues.

I mean, we're supposed to be talking about what we're writing our book about, the Trinity and Tawhid, and I hope it's not just the standard, you can't believe the

Trinity because you can't trust New Testament stuff. Hopefully, it will be the much more substantive discussion of the positive

Islamic belief in Tawhid. Why does that demand Unitarianism? How can

God exist eternally in a Unitarian mode versus the

Trinity and our belief of the love that existed within the

Godhead even before creation and that kind of stuff. I'm really hoping that that's where it's going to be able to go.

But I have to admit that what might preclude that is what the

Muslims are expecting. A lot of the Muslims don't want a discussion like that. Some do,

I acknowledge that, I'm glad that there are those that would like to hear that kind of thing rather than the same old, same old.

But unfortunately, a lot of Muslims sort of want the blood in the water, sharks in the water type situation and we'll see, we'll see.

But anyway, I think it will be sort of a mixture of,

I don't know the order yet, but Bashir Vania and this Yusuf Buxin fellow and then

Yusuf Ismail, those will be the first part of the debate series and then

Shabir will be at the end. And so we definitely, I still want to get to, and let me look here,

I've still got a fair amount left just in this opening statement from Yusuf Ismail that I really want to try to get to.

So we've got about 36 minutes, I think, left in the program and so we'll be able to get through a portion of that.

Unfortunately, I can't show you all what this looks like. I would probably be accused of trying to sell copies of Audio Notetaker.

But again, for anybody, if you're going back to school and stuff like that, look up Audio Notetaker.

I wish I had had this when I was in school. I really, really do. It is so incredibly useful.

But anyhow, you'll see how easy it is for me to just start and stop stuff and go through it here. All right, let's get back to Yusuf Ismail.

I honestly don't remember where we are, but I'll figure it out as soon as I press this button. What does it signify?

It signifies that certain aspects or certain verses, certain manuscripts are, there's some kind of unanimity across the board, some of the verses are sound.

B signifies there might be a certain doubt. C, there might not be an entirely correct understanding of this. D, a bit spurious, weak, not authentic, not authoritative, and so they won't use it.

Okay, we're talking here, get back into the context here, we're talking here, and by the way,

I appreciate someone on Twitter linked me to a translation of the Pope's thing by Google.

Of course, it's just a Google translate, but it's English anyways. I'd like the official version, because I need to know where we, really what the words are saying.

But anyways, I appreciate that. Thank you, TNLPlanet, for that. This is talking about the

UBS 4th edition, the United Bible Society's text, as I've mentioned before.

In fact, I had a great time yesterday, by the way, with a whole group of pastors and a minister's fraternal on exegetical, expositional preaching at FBC Lyndale.

It was really encouraging to meet with these men and to encourage them in doing exegetical, expositional preaching of the text itself.

And what I talked about was really interesting. In fact, I found it more interesting than I thought it was going to be.

And I wasn't the one speaking. Because what I addressed was the intersection of textual criticism and canonicity.

And so, for example, I talked about Luke 23, 34, Father, forgive them if they know not what they do, Romans 5, 1, the long writing of Mark, the

Prick of Adultery. How do we handle these variants in the context of preaching the

Word of God and bringing our people along to a position of maturity so they can understand the history of the text of the

New Testament? And they seemed to really enjoy it, and I really enjoyed it. It may be something

I should actually plan to do on the program sometime, to sort of repeat that information, because I did find it to be rather useful.

Anyway, he's talking about the fact that the United Bible Society's text, the

UBS 4th currently, is primarily designed to be used by people who are translating the

New Testament into other languages, you know, Wycliffe and people like that. So there's only a small number, relatively small number,

I forget how many, I think it's around 1 ,400? I had the number at one point. I'll have to look it back up again.

I think it's around 1 ,400 variants that are noted in the

UBS text, over against over 10 ,000 that are noted in the

Nestle -Allen text. The UBS text gives more information per variant than the

Nestle -Allen does, but the Nestle -Allen gives a much wider example, a much wider database from which to draw.

And in the UBS text, the committee decided, and I sometimes wish they hadn't bothered with this, but they decided to assign a rating that primarily expressed the unanimity and viewpoint of the selection committee itself.

Now, what a lot of, I think, Yusuf Ismail's listeners don't understand is that no matter whether it's an

A, a B, a C, or a D, the other readings that were not included in the text are found in the note.

It's not like something has been expunged. It's not like we don't know what the other readings were. As long as you have that information and you've learned to read the apparatus, and remember, when was that?

2010 -ish that we did the thing where we went through how to read the apparatus and we gave examples, and I think we did both

UBS -4 and Nestle -Allen, if I recall correctly. It's still on the blog somewhere. If you look up apparatus or something like that, it'll probably come up on the blog.

But if you've learned to read the sigla and to read the apparatus, you can determine for yourself what sources have what reading, etc.,

etc., and things like that. And so these letters are not meant to say, well, this verse has this amount of authority.

It's just simply a reflection of the fact that the committee is expressing its understanding of their unanimity as to the choice of the main reading in the text.

That's what it's about. And I've heard a lot of Islamic apologists sort of camp on this as if it somehow is an indication of some type of overall problem with the text of the

New Testament or something like that. But what they do is that they develop an eclectic edition of the

New Testament using existing manuscripts. Metzger, for example, and he's a conservative scholar, in his book

The Text for the New Testament and its Development, he says, lest, however, the wrong impression be conveyed from the statistics given above regarding the total number of Greek manuscripts, it should be pointed out that most of the papyri are relatively fragmentary and that only about 50 contain the entire

New Testament. Now, what does that tell you from a conservative scholar such as Metzger? Well, I would be very interested in understanding what

Yusuf Ismail thinks it tells you from a conservative scholar like Metzger. What do you think he's trying to communicate?

See, this is what I would challenge Yusuf to do is don't just throw this stuff out because you're throwing this stuff out to people who, you have to admit, are completely ignorant of what this information could mean.

So if you just throw it out, you're sort of inviting them to put the worst possible construction out of ignorance and not to come to a proper conclusion.

What does that mean? I mean, it's pretty obvious from a historical standpoint that papyri manuscripts from the first century are going to be significantly fewer in number than vellum manuscripts from the 12th century.

There's just that little millennium thing between the two, that's all. I mean, it's just a given that that's going to be the case.

So what does it mean? And again, I think it's a little bit unfair not to point out that the time frame between the original writing of the

Quran, its original compilation, even if you just sort of take the Uthmanic revision as a given as recorded in the

Hadith literature, the time frame between that and the codification of that text in printing is significantly shorter than the time frame between the writing in the

New Testament and the invention of printing, which, while not absolutely freezing a text in time, certainly stabilizes a text in time because of the number of copies that can be made, so on and so forth.

Much different thing here. And unfortunately, I think many people in the audience are probably trying to compare the two on a one -to -one basis, not recognizing that that is not an appropriate path to follow.

So I would keep all that in mind. If you look at the 5 ,847 Greek manuscripts, no two, apart from the tiniest fragments, are identical.

Of course not. No two handwritten manuscripts of the Quran are identical. No two handwritten manuscripts of anything are going to be identical because they're handwritten.

I mean, I suppose you could hope for an identical reading for a single sheet or something like that.

And again, the Quran only 56 % the length of the New Testament. Much shorter. But still, that is the reality of all handwritten manuscripts that come to us from antiquity.

All of them. Doesn't matter what it is. Whether it's religious, non -religious, they're never going to be identical until 1949, the invention of the photocopier.

Even in printing. Certainly the sheets printed from one setting of type will be identical.

But the same book could be printed in two different cities in the days of Gutenberg and have differences between them because the type setting is done by human beings.

As long as human beings are human beings, human beings are going to make mistakes.

And so, again, just throwing that out without contextualizing it is not an argument.

It may be a factual statement, but outside of a context, it's not a meaningful statement.

Until the 8th century, there's not one Greek manuscript that contains the books of the New Testament in the present order that we have them.

Why is that relevant? There's no claim on the

New Testament's part that the order of the books is inspired. At all. For example,

P46. P46 is the earliest collection of Paul's writings.

And guess what book comes after Romans? Hebrews. Is that relevant?

It's relevant to the fact that it's a testimony that someone at the beginning of the 2nd century thought that Paul wrote

Hebrews. But it's not relevant to inspiration or anything else. The order of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is not inspired.

You could take the New Testament books and completely rearrange the order they're in, and it would have absolutely, positively, not the slightest impact upon the inspiration of those texts, because they were written by multiple authors at multiple times to multiple locations.

And so, that's irrelevant. And I would argue you could throw the

Surahs of the Quran. In fact, I over and over again emphasize to audiences that they should not read the

Quran from beginning to end. That they should read it in chronological order.

At least that will help them to try to follow the background of some of the texts in the life of Muhammad.

Now, I understand a Muslim would say, no, no, no. The way that it's constructed comes from Allah.

Now, I don't know where you get that. The Quran doesn't say that. There may be something in the

Hadith I've missed. Didn't realize the significance of it. Skipped over it or something.

I don't know. But I don't think Muhammad said anything about the order of the Quran. And obviously, from the

Islamic perspective, given the nature of the Quran, the chronological order is irrelevant. It's all just words of God.

You don't need to understand what's going on in Muhammad's life to understand. But I simply suggest to you that I think we all recognize that doesn't work.

That you do need to know what the background is to be able to make sense of large portions of it. You've got the Uspensky Gospels, the first dated

New Testament in about 835. Of the 5 ,847 manuscripts, 28 level of these manuscripts are in the minuscule type of handwriting.

That writing dates from the 9th century onwards. 2 ,279 lectionaries, also a type of writing.

That's only about... No, it's not a type of writing. I think Yusuf is confused there.

The lectionary is a form of the text that breaks it into readings for use in liturgical service.

And so it's not like it's some different kind of writing. Maybe he's just speaking too quickly, but since he just differentiated between unseal and minuscule, and the minuscule was developed 8th, 9th century, it very quickly banishes the unseal form because it's much easier to read and to copy.

That's what leads me to think that he's saying that the lectionary form is yet another form of writing, which it really is not.

It's another form of manuscript in the sense of the function of the manuscript, but it's not another form of writing as in unseal versus manuscript.

30 lectionaries date from before the 9th century, meaning the majority date after the 9th century, 900 years after Jesus.

And that's something similar to what I'd suggest. Bart Ehrman, for example, the same scholar that I quoted, he states that when one compares one manuscript to another, no two copies agree in their wording.

And this is his quotation. He says there's been something that 200 ,000 and 300 ,000 variations amongst all the manuscripts, which is more variations than the

New Testament itself. Now, I present that all the time. I present it at the beginning of my

New Testament Reliability presentation, and then I contextualize it so people can understand what that means, because I don't know if I've forgotten if the next breath from Yusuf Ismail will be to then continue

Bart Ehrman's statement, because Bart Ehrman will then, as any textual critical scholar has to say, will point out that the vast majority, and I don't know that he would go with as large a majority as I would, but the vast majority of these variants are utterly irrelevant.

And he also would agree with me that to interpret the words of that's more variants than there are words in the

New Testament. There's 138 ,162 words in Neshe 'alon 27th. I need to memorize the new number in Neshe 'alon 28th, because it's actually a little bit higher.

I think it's around 200 instead of 162. But anyways, that communicates to many people the idea, and it's a false idea, that there are as many as three variants per word in the

New Testament. That's not the case. That's not the case. The vast majority of these variations could not be explained outside of the

Greek language. In other words, they do not translate. They do not impact meaning.

They're not translatable. Whether you have a movable new or not, word order issues that do not come across in other languages, things like that.

When people just throw out the variant number without contextualizing it,

I'll be perfectly honest with you, that really bothers me, and it almost makes me go to the point of accusing that person of dishonesty or your ignorance one of the two.

Because this is such an obvious thing, and yet I have to point it out to people.

If you only have one copy of a book, one copy of an ancient work, how many textual variants will you have?

None. You'll have no textual variants if you only have one copy. Now, a lot of Christians, and evidently, seemingly a lot of Muslims, wish that's all you had.

Just one. So there's no question about it. But think with me for a moment.

Which is better to have of a work of antiquity? 5 ,700 manuscripts or one?

Well, some people say one. Okay, what's the problem with that? The problem with that is that one author has to have gotten it absolutely right, because if he messed anything up, there's no way of finding out.

There's no way of knowing. The more manuscripts you have for a work of antiquity, the greater your capacity to have trust that you know what the original said.

And this is going to be one of the key issues in my debate with Yusuf, and I'm hoping Yusuf is listening. I think that he is. Maybe not live, but I'm catching the podcast.

There's a little bit of a time difference between us. But we are going to be debating which is the better methodology of transmission.

A controlled transmission, such as the Quran has because of the Uthmanic revision, or the free transmission of the text that we find in the

New Testament. And my argument is it is the free. And Bart Ehrman would agree with me on that point.

I know he would. He would loathe to do so, but I am very certain that he would agree that having, let's say, well, the example

I always use is 1 John 3 .1. I mentioned it before. Whether Kai Essman is there, it's an example of Homo Eteliton.

Whether we have, if we have 500 manuscripts of the book of 1

John, it is far better to have 500 manuscripts of 1

John than only one manuscript of 1 John where that error takes place. Because if that error took place there, we have nothing to compare it to.

We would never be able to recognize that a scribe had engaged in the error of Homo Eteliton.

Similar endings. He had written Claythoman. His eye goes back to what he's copying. He sees the end of Kai Essman.

He sees Mu Epsilon Nu. He starts there. He allows us to recognize that.

Now, it also creates textual variants. But you see, it actually doesn't create the textual variants.

It just reveals them. If you only have one copy, you've still got a textual variant. You've still got a textual variant.

You just don't know you've got a textual variant. You don't know how many of them you've got. That's going to be a challenge.

And I accept the challenge. And one of the great, wonderful things about being a

Reformed Christian is I can simply pray that God will allow me to do my best, to speak with clarity, to lay it out there, and then you know what?

I can leave it up to Him. And if I see people that just don't, they don't want to get it, they don't want to hear, there's nothing

I can do about that. There's nothing I can do about that. I've got to leave it in God's hands. And He will take care of the issue.

So, there you go. There's some comments on that. That was the first New Testament ever compiled by a chap called

Desiderius Erasmus, issued at Basel in 1516. The first time that you had the complete Greek New Testament.

And what he did was that he used complete printed Greek New Testament, used the corrupted existing manuscripts after the 9th century or whatever existed to compile the

New Testament. Uh, what? Um, corrupted after the 9th, what?

He used Byzantine manuscripts. He had about a half dozen. He had one as early as the 10th century, but he didn't trust it.

Um, that first edition, as he himself said, was precipitated rather than edited. He made changes over the next couple of editions.

Interestingly enough, the Kamiohonium was not a part of that first edition. I wonder if Yusuf is aware of that. The Kamiohonium was not in the first two editions of Erasmus.

It was not inserted until the third edition of Erasmus, which one, unfortunately, was the most popular of his editions, and then is continued on in the other editions that become the basis of the

Textus Receptus. But, um, yes, Erasmus did have a very limited textual platform to draw from, so limited that when he got to the

Book of Revelation, he didn't have any manuscripts at all. And he had to borrow a commentary on the

Book of Revelation from his friend Johannes Reikland, who himself is a very interesting fellow.

Um, and of course that led to a number of very interesting readings in the Book of Revelation where one of his scribes made errors extracting the

Greek text out of the commentary text. And then, of course, the famous story of the fact that his manuscript of that commentary, the last few pages had fallen off, so he had to reconstruct the last six verses of the last chapter of Revelation from the

Latin Vulgate, which resulted in readings that no one has ever seen in a Greek manuscript before, but continue to be in the

Textus Receptus today, and are dutifully defended by TR -only folks in King James Olympus to this very day, who likewise detest the

Latin Vulgate, except for when the Latin Vulgate becomes the source of their TR. That's a whole other debate. Several readings have been found, which have never been found in the existing manuscript.

What does it tell you? It tells you the chap was editing. Theodobiza! It tells you the chap was editing.

No, it doesn't. It tells you that the chap, which would be

Erasmus, had to make editorial decisions when the manuscripts he had differed from one another.

It tells you that he was, and I'm not sure if Yusuf is aware of this, but that first edition was a diaglon.

The Novum Instrumentum was a diaglon, and to be honest with you, Erasmus sort of did the

Greek as a side thing. Erasmus was most focused initially, a lot of people are not aware of this, upon his own fresh

Latin translation, and assumed he'd get most of the heat for daring to mess with the

Latin Vulgate. And he did, in fact. But attention turned eventually primarily to the

Greek because of the impact that it was having. So just to simply say, oh, he was editing.

Well, what do you mean by that? Do you mean he was doing textual criticism because they had variations in manuscripts in front of him?

Yes. Does it mean that he was making decisions concerning when to follow the

Vulgate? Because he did, in Acts, he inserted some sections following the

Vulgate rather than following even the Greek manuscripts that he had. Okay, but are your hearers,

Yusuf, going to understand your phrase, editing, as meaning that? Or are they sitting there going, ah,

I think I'll change this, ah, I think I'll change that. Erasmus was not that cavalier in his behavior.

Theodobiza, for example, used the corrupt Byzantine text -type manuscripts and published nine editions of the Greek New Testament before 1565 and 1604.

And that, in fact, formed the basis of the King James Version. Yeah, the seven editions, the seven printed editions that were utilized with the

King James translators did include Basis 1598, the 1550

Stephanos, and the five editions of Erasmus. And are they all Byzantine? Yep.

They're all related to one another. I mean, it's not like Basis came up with a whole new text. The number of variations between the five editions of Erasmus, Stephanos, and Basis are relatively small.

They're interesting. They are interesting to note, and the King James translators had to make decisions about them.

Sometimes I don't even think they were aware of it. To be very honest with you, there really wasn't any sustained effort on the part of the

King James translators to engage in a textual critical study. They weren't using manuscripts.

They were using printed editions of the Greek New Testament. They were focused upon producing a translation, not revisiting all the textual issues that we would be most concerned about today.

So again, to say the corrupted Byzantine type, if what you mean by that is that most scholars see the

Byzantine text type as a later text type, and not representative of the primitive text as well as the

Alexandrian, that's true. But I would argue, and would be glad to demonstrate,

Yusuf, that if you apply the same standards of textual critical analysis, and if you apply the same hermeneutical methodology of interpretation to the most

Byzantine manuscript and the most Alexandrian manuscript, you will not come up with a different doctrine of teaching.

You won't. I know my King James -only friends are jumping up and down and throwing things at their computer right now, but you will not.

They are not teaching a different gospel or a different message. So they're using manuscripts dating later, and based on all these fragments, they're compiling what we have, an eclectic edition of the

New Testament. I think Yusuf really thinks that this is a devastating argument, but it's only devastating to someone who has no earthly idea of what he's talking about.

It's not in any way, shape, or form devastating to those of us who work with the Greek New Testament regularly.

These are things that we all know, and it's only by placing them in a context that is unfriendly to them can you come up with any type of meaningful application.

These are some of the basic Greek texts in the Christian world, the major anciels, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, and Sinaiticus.

Sinaiticus, which is the oldest, I'd urge you to check www .codexsinaiticus .co .za for the first time.

That's going to be released to the public. And in the Sinaiticus, I don't have time to amplify it further, which is the oldest, dating to the fourth century, 400 years after Jesus.

What you'd find there is books contained which don't appear. Now, let me just stop right there.

That's not 400 years after Jesus. When you say fourth century, that's misleading.

400 years after Jesus would be A .D. 430. Sinaiticus is dated to about 325 to 350.

There's almost 100 years off in his calculations there. So it's much closer than he seemingly indicated by that.

A lot of people struggle with the idea of first century, second century, third century, fourth century, so on and so forth. Not recognizing the fourth century as the 300s, because the first century is the 0s.

And so, a lot of us have fallen into that particular trap, as he just did there.

Now, is it true that Codex Sinaiticus contains books other than what we have in the canon of the Old and New Testament?

Yes, it does. Does anyone ever bother to try to prove that this indicated that the authors of Codex Sinaiticus were canonically challenged?

No, they don't bother to go there for some reason. Remember, Codex Sinaiticus is a very large volume. It would have been very expensive to produce.

And, as such, an individual who had that kind of money, and again, one of the possibilities that exists out there, is that Codex Sinaiticus is one of those copies that was produced with imperial monies, because it is mentioned that the council of Nicaea, Constantine gave money to the church for the production of biblical manuscripts.

He didn't tell them what to produce, he just gave them money to produce them, because the Roman state had been destroying, only 12 years earlier, hundreds, and in fact thousands, of biblical manuscripts.

And so, sort of a mea culpa thing on the part of the

Roman emperor at that particular point. But, if you were going to spend a lot of money to have a huge volume made, there would be people who would say, well,

I want the Old New Testament, and I'd also like some of my favorite books of religion.

Because I want them all in one place. And I want them all to be done very, very well. Now, today we wouldn't do that, but I would like to suggest that there is a modern parallel to this.

I have a Logos library. I have many Bibles in my

Logos library. I have Greek Bibles, and Latin Bibles, and Aramaic Bibles, and all sorts of stuff.

But I have all sorts of other books in my library too. That doesn't mean I think they're canonical. Just because they're all sitting on the same hard drive, all in the same program, it's a

Bible study program, but that doesn't mean that I believe that they're canonical.

And someone back then could say, I want to have, this is going to be my library. This is going to be my portable library.

So let's put everything in there that I want, and I really enjoy reading The Shepherd of Hermas. It was very popular amongst

Christians, so I want The Shepherd of Hermas in there as well. And the jumped to assumption is, ah, see, see, canon problems.

But I've yet to have anyone go, and here's my evidence that that proves that this person at this time, you know, if this was a manuscript from maybe the 2nd century, that might have a little more oomph to it, but really, by the 4th century, there was much more clarity on these subjects.

And the likelihood of inclusion of The Shepherd of Hermas, or The Epistle of Barnabas, or anything like that, reflecting a canonical decision, not as much.

In the existing New Testament, for example, we've got

The Shepherd of Hermas, The Epistle of Barnabas, different portions considered part of biblical canon by the editors of the

Codex, but they were not considered later on. Now, notice what he said. He just jumped to the assumption, that means they're considered part of the biblical canon.

Didn't prove it. I challenge you. Prove it. What's your evidence? What's your evidence?

Because remember, Sinaiticus has numerous scribes that are involved with it. In fact, if you go to the very website he mentioned,

CodexSinaiticus .org, and I was checking this out. Recently I've been looking really closely at a particular phrase, sentence actually, that's found in John Chapter 18, because it's contained in P52, Manuscript P52, the little fragment.

And it just has captured my heart, what

Jesus said to Pilate. I haven't tried to memorize it, and I don't have it here in front of me.

I think it's Paschaon, I think ek is there, ek teis aleithios.

So, everyone who is of the truth, akuai, is it teis mufonais, or muteis fonais.

Look, it's Jesus' words, everyone who is from or according to the truth, hears my voice.

Now, I don't have time to even begin to expand upon that. If you, like me, are just overwhelmed with the artistry of the

Gospel of John, especially as he talks about hearing, and the voice, and being of the truth, and of God.

It's just awesome. And to me, it's just so awesome that the earliest fragment we have has that line in it.

But I was looking at Sinaiticus, that particular page is fairly badly faded.

I really had to zoom in on it to read it. It's a fantastic website, by the way. But one of the neat things is, they have indicated which of the scribes wrote that particular section.

And so you have multiple scribes working on this same manuscript. So are you saying that all of them held the canonical status of these books?

How do you prove that? Have you even tried to prove that? Or is this just an assumption on your part? That would be one of the things that I would try to bring up and to challenge

Yusuf Ismail at that point. Well, we're pretty much out of time on the program today. We have covered a bunch of stuff.

And, yeah, Theophilus just put that in channel. I think that's, yeah, Mutes Phones. That was close. I hadn't tried to memorize it, but I got fairly close to it.

Anyways, we've covered a bunch of stuff today. Today has been our first live webcam

Eye of Sauron experience. We're going to have to start putting some serious thought into what's in the background.

And I'm thinking Lava Lamp. I really am. I'm thinking mega Lava Lamp. Not one of the little ones.

I'm thinking a beautiful one back there. Say one that stands on the floor.

That would be really cool. Except that would be really hot, too. Lava is hot.

Yeah, because that's nice and cool. You know what? We need one of those

Tesla balls. That's what we need. One of the... Except that will probably interfere with the microphone. Who knows?

Anyways, thanks for watching and listening to The Dividing Line today. Home next week.

So it should be fairly regular. And the next week after that should be fairly regular even though that's right as I'm preparing to go.

So please, your prayers for preparation and especially for the time greatly appreciated coming up in South Africa.