June 14, 2016 Show with Tony Costa on “Islam & Terrorism: Why has Muhummand’s Religion Made the World a More Dangerous Place?”

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on the 14th day of June, 2016.

And we are honored and delighted to have back on Iron Sharpens Iron a man who is fast becoming one of my very favorite guests,

Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary. In light of the horrific events of this past Sunday morning in Orlando, Florida, we are going to be discussing the theme,

Islam and terrorism, why has Muhammad's religion made our world a more dangerous place, a necessary discussion in the aftermath of the

Orlando massacre when victims are in flagrant rebellion against God.

The first half of that theme you may be hearing every single day, numerous times a day, perhaps even all day on a number of television stations such as Fox News and others, but the last element of our discussion is something that you will very rarely ever hear openly discussed even on conservative

TV and talk radio, when victims are in flagrant rebellion against God.

And that is something that needs to be addressed as well in addition to the first part of our discussion.

But first of all, let me welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Tony Costa. Well, Chris, it's always a pleasure to be on your show.

And some of our guests are tuning in to hear you for the first time, no doubt.

Why don't you just briefly explain Toronto Baptist Seminary and what your position is there.

Toronto Baptist Seminary is a Reformed Baptist seminary in the heart of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

And we've been around for quite a while. The founder was Dr. T .T. Shields, who was also the pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church also in Toronto.

And it is probably one of the last bastions of Orthodox Christianity in Toronto in terms of seminaries, many of which are becoming cemeteries.

But it is a school that is committed. Our motto is Cata Christum, which is according to Christ.

And we take a stand for the Word of God, an uncompromising stand for the Word of God. And we train young men and women, men in particular for the pastorate and women in missionary work, as well as young men.

Some of our students have moved on to higher education, going towards obtaining doctorates in theology and philosophy and using their talents for the glory of God.

And my position there, I'm a professor of apologetics. I teach on the defense of the

Christian faith, but I also teach on various other areas, comparative world religions with a specialization on Islam.

I also teach on cults and the New Age movement. I do some systematic theology and also church history as well.

And I also have the privilege of being an adjunct professor with Heritage College and Seminary, also in Canada, in Cambridge, Ontario.

And I'm also an adjunct with the Providence Theological Seminary in Franklin, Tennessee. And I also teach with the

University of Toronto. And it's wonderful to see young men and women being changed by the

Word of God, being challenged and going out and changing the world for Jesus Christ. Yeah.

Is T .T. Shields one of those names that I, if I remember correctly, was associated with the early foundings of fundamentalism at the

Niagara Bible Conference? Yes, he was related to that as well. He was a very strong, reformed preacher.

Very controversial as well, particularly because of his stand against the papacy. And very uncompromising towards liberal theologians.

So very outspoken. Some have characterized him a bit of a theological bully, but he was just very, very uncompromising when it came to the truth of God's Word and the gospel.

Amen. And by the way, that was the golden tone voice of my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Why don't you officially greet our guest today, Buzz? Well, it's good to have you back, Dr. Costa.

And looking forward to what you have for us today. Thank you, sir. And it's a privilege to have you with us.

And looking forward to it. I'd like to give our listeners the opportunity to also chime in with their own questions today, as always, by email at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we ask of you to give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And we look forward to hearing what you have to say in regard to this very controversial and difficult subject.

Well, first of all, the horrific events that we have all heard about by now, anyone who has any form of media, whether it be radios, televisions, or computers, they've no doubt heard about this.

And it has been described as the largest mass shooting in United States history.

And actually, I've got a post by Eric Holmberg, who has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron of the

Apologetics Network. He begged to differ on that statistic.

He said that the largest mass shooting in U .S. history happened December 29, 1890, when 297

Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota were murdered by federal agents and members of the 7th

Calvary, who had come to confiscate their firearms for their own safety and protection, which was what the lie that was told these

Sioux Indians. The slaughter began after the majority of the Sioux had peacefully turned in their firearms.

So, that is an interesting statistic that throws a monkey wrench into the news reports.

And I had also wondered if the Mountain Meadows Massacre that had taken place in the 19th century by the order of Brigham Young of the

Mormon Church, who slaughtered Mormons, who slaughtered dozens of innocent men, women, and children,

I believe children over the age of 8, and those younger were spared, were the only ones spared.

But, as I was discussing with Dr. White yesterday, with that case, we do not know how many of them were shot, because there was a combination of shooting and stabbing and axes and things like that being used.

So, we will never know how many of those victims, which exceeded the number in Orlando, we will never know how many of those were shot.

But, having said all of that, this is indeed a horrific event, and it demands our attention as Christians, and it demands our attention as Christians because of the two reasons that we are actually having

Dr. Costa as a guest today. The two reasons why these demand the attention of Christians is that this involves one of the world's largest religions,

Islam, and it also involves the sin of homosexuality, and the venue in which this massacre took place is not only a well -known establishment popular amongst the homosexual community, if you want to use that term,

I despise that term actually, because we don't refer to the adulterer community or the murderer community or the thief community, but the homosexuals in the

Orlando area or those involved in that activity are known to frequent this establishment, which is primarily there for their enjoyment, and obviously there are heterosexuals that go there too who celebrate that sin with them.

And it also is a hub, apparently according to news reports, a hub of the homosexual activist community.

That seems to be some kind of a gathering place where leaders in activism gather together to not only celebrate things, but to discuss strategy of public relations and activism and that kind of thing.

So there are a number of very controversial factors that muddy the waters of addressing a horrific event like this.

And first of all, let's address, Tony, so our listeners know exactly where you are coming from.

You are someone who really thoroughly knows the

Islamic religion. I know that most apologists shy away from calling themselves experts, but you are a serious student of Islam and you've debated

Muslims, and so this is not just a cursory knowledge you have of the subject of Islam, am

I correct? Yes, that's correct. I've been studying Islam now for,

I would say, oh my, since the early 90s, 92 or so, so we're looking at about 24 to 25 years now.

And tell us about some of the debates you've had with Muslims. I've debated quite an assortment of Muslim apologists.

Probably the best -known Muslim apologist in the world today is perhaps Dr. Shabir Ali. Yes. He's also from Toronto, and he and I go back.

We're good friends, actually. We're very good friends. We're both Torontonians, and we go back to the early 90s when he first got started, and he was the first Muslim that I debated.

And he is considered the leading apologist today, and he's debated

James White and many other Christian apologists as well. Yes. I've debated many others,

Sadat Anwar, Yusuf Ismail, some from Europe, some from the

United States, some from Canada. And so over the years, I've been invited by a number of Christian ministries at university settings, scholar settings, to come and debate when it comes to the topic of Islam.

So I learned Islam because in the early 90s, I began to realize that this was going to be a serious religion that we would have to deal with, that the

Church could not ignore. I was already sounding the alarm in the early 90s in the Church, and telling them about the wave of Islam.

I said, the winds are blowing now, but you're going to see a hurricane like you've never seen before. And I think we've reached that stage now.

And I think that the Church, for the most part, is still asleep. The Church has not yet recognized the seriousness of Islam, and the

Church still takes the position that we will love Muslims into the Kingdom, and that's partially true.

Thus, we have to show the love of God, and so forth. But there's also speaking the truth in love, as Ephesians 4 .15

points out. And also dealing with the stark facts about Islam, and about the concepts of jihad, and Sharia law, and the expansion of the

Islamic hegemony. And so, I have been invited frequently to a number of conferences, both here in Canada, and the

United States, the United Kingdom, to address these issues, and to awaken the

Church from her slumber. And to make not just the Church aware, but I've also been very active in making the general public aware of these threats as well.

And it's interesting how someone might differentiate or contrast loving people into the

Kingdom with telling them and warning them about things they must repent of in order to be spared of the fires of hell.

Isn't that love? Yes. We treat, many Christians treat, they think that the

Gospel message is just a form of fire insurance. And we simply think that if we just love them, that's sufficient.

But if we look at the ministry of Christ, He not only showed love, but He was the most offensive person who ever lived.

He offended the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots, He even offended His own family and brothers were offended at Him.

And so, the reason for that is because truth by nature is offensive. The Gospel is not sugar.

The Gospel is salt. It stings. And the fact of the matter is that our

Lord showed us in His very life and ministry that you don't win people to the

Kingdom by just loving them to death, but that you tell them the truth. When we see Him talk to the Samaritan woman,

He shows her compassion. He offers her the waters of life. But then

He turns to her and says, You worship that which you do not know, for salvation is of the

Jews. And He tells her the truth that she is ignorant of what she worships and that she needs to come to Him for life and to have a right relationship with God.

So, that is the way that the Church through the centuries has expanded.

The way the Church has grown is by recognizing that both truth and love are sisters and that we need to speak both of them.

And what we find is either the Church goes to one polarity, it's just love, love, love, love, or it goes to the other polarity where it's just fire and brimstone preaching, you know, the turn or burn.

And the answer, of course, as you know, Chris, is the happy medium. You need to bring both love and truth to bear.

They have to come together. And if I'm a medical doctor, I'm not going to give a cancer patient an aspirin.

I'm going to give them the treatment that they need to get rid of those cancer cells. And that's what we're doing in our world today.

We're giving people spiritual aspirin, and we're not dealing with the spiritual cancer that is eating away at our society and eating away at men's souls.

Yes, and one of the difficult tasks when you're involved in public speaking, being on a radio program or a television program or behind a pulpit when there are many ears listening, is that you, as a

Christian, should be very concerned that you do not appear to be a

Pharisee who is self -righteous, who thinks that you are innately superior to others, that your sins are not an offense to God, if you have any.

And I say that tongue -in -cheek, obviously. And that it is those people out there, the

Muslims and the homosexuals, who are the only ones deserving of God's wrath.

And, in fact, there are some people, I'm sure, who are celebrating. In fact,

I know at least one professing pastor, Steve Anderson, who I do not even consider to be a regenerate individual.

I think that he is lost or possibly even reprobate, but he is a wicked individual who distorts the gospel and the truth of God and mixes truths with lies, but is clearly one who delights in the death of the wicked.

He takes exuberant joy in witnessing things like had occurred on Sunday morning in Orlando.

And we do not want to appear to the world that we are celebrating the fact that not only did a

Muslim kill over 50 people practicing homosexual behavior, but he also killed himself.

So there's double reasons to celebrate. And there are, no doubt, many Christians across the country, or professing

Christians, who are laughing and making all kinds of jokes and think this is just terrific.

And at the same time, although we should rightly view this as a horrific tragedy,

I don't know how any Christian who believes in the reality of hell could view this event with joy, knowing that many, if not all, of those victims were, no doubt, rebels against Christ and His Word.

And there is no joy to be taken when such a life is removed from the earth prior to their repentance.

And so, therefore, this is indeed an evil reaction to celebrate such a thing.

But we do, nonetheless, have to be, as Christians, who claim there is objective truth, that there are areas of God's truth that are so clear to us that they are black and white with no shades of gray, and they need to be put under a spotlight, and they need to be examined in light of such a horrific tragedy.

Now, first of all, why don't you let our listeners know what you know about the specific events that took place in Orlando and the person who was the perpetrator of these murders.

Yes, well, he was born in the United States, I believe in the state of New York. His parents migrated from Afghanistan.

His father, actually, was quite a champion of the Taliban, which is a recognized terrorist organization in Afghanistan.

And what we are hearing is that this young man, there are now rumors floating around that he may have been gay as well.

His former wife made that statement. But that's neither here nor there, because we're going to be looking at the ideology that fueled him.

And what we do know is that his father, when he was being interviewed by the media, said that his son had seen two gay men in Miami, Florida, kissing each other, and this took him into a rage.

And he planned this whole thing out. Apparently, he visited this gay bar frequently.

And personally, I think he may have been scouting it. And the night in which the morning hours of Sunday, last

Sunday, in which he went in and started shooting all these people, he was shooting them as he was crying out,

Allahu Akbar. Now, let me just say something about that phrase, Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar is the

Arabic Muslim battle cry. This was the same battle cry that Muhammad himself, the prophet of Islam, would employ when he would be attacking his enemies.

And the phrase Allahu Akbar means, literally, Allah is the greater.

We usually hear people say that Allahu Akbar means God is great. But that's not true. The word

Akbar is what we call a comparative adverb. It's comparative, saying that Allah is greater than you,

Allah is greater than your God, and so forth. And when he called the authorities, he informed them that he had pledged his allegiance to ISIS.

Now, you'll notice that there's a pattern here. Just recently, just I think yesterday in Paris, a police officer and his wife or companion were stabbed to death by a

Muslim, also crying out, Allahu Akbar. And he was shot by the authorities as well.

So I think it's important to realize here that, whether or not this man was gay or not, the question is, what was the ideology that fueled him to want to kill all of these people?

And why in this particular case, at a gay bar? Why, we'll probably discuss this in the show, but there's a particular view of homosexuality in Islam that sees it as a very vile practice, and one in which homosexuals should be put to death.

Now, if this man was gay, if he was gay, and of course, there are Muslims, of course, who also struggle with these types of proclivities, as other people do.

If he was gay, then this would also explain why he would want to, if you will, atone for his sins by killing the very people that he shared the same sexual preferences with.

But it's also something else that we have to deal with, Chris, and that is that we are now in the month of Ramadan, and Ramadan is the holy month of Islam in which the

Quran was sent down, and it's during this month that you will notice that there is a surge in terrorist activity.

In fact, ISIS last week said to make the holy month of Ramadan a month of calamity for the unbelievers, and they were calling on Muslims in North America and in Europe to start attacking the infidels.

There is now high security right now at the Euro games, at the soccer games going on right now in Europe.

And so, Ramadan, because it is the holiest month of the year, this is the time when

Muslims begin to read the Quran from chapter 1 to chapter 114, and it's also a time of great piety.

And what is the greatest expression of piety towards Allah? Well, the greatest expression of piety towards Allah is jihad.

To die in, as the Quran says, to die in the way of Allah is the surety of their salvation.

It's the one -way ticket to paradise. And so it's not surprising that we are seeing this spike in terrorist activity around the world, because during Ramadan, this is the time in which if you die as a martyr, you have, if you will, extra merit because of the holy month.

Now, one thing that our mutual friend and brother in Christ, a colleague of yours in the apologetics realm,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, one thing that he constantly reminds us of, especially those of us who are zealous Christians, who abhor false religions, and we may have a very quick trigger finger when it comes to our responses on the internet and on our telephones and so forth, on how we respond to these kinds of things.

And he reminds us that although we would all be in harmony as Christians that Islam is a false religion, that we must not be involved in broad -brushing all

Muslims together in the aftermath of these kinds of events, because that is slander, it's a bearing of false witness against your neighbor, even if your neighbor is not a

Christian, and even if your neighbor is promoting a false religion, we're not supposed to lie about them.

And also, we, who are Christians, rightly despise it when we are broad -brushed with not only nuts and charlatans like Steven Anderson and other people who profess to be

Christians, who we want to distance ourselves as far as we can get from them, and even when it comes to the liberal media constantly blurring the line between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity in regard to violence in centuries past, with the tens of thousands or countless thousands of people that were brutally tortured and murdered at the hands of the

Church of Rome, and not to say that Protestants weren't guilty of those types of actions too, but they really pale into insignificance numerically with what

Rome had done, and Dr. Costa, you and I are both Baptists, and we know that as a movement and as a people, the

Baptists were never guilty of these kinds of atrocities, other than individuals who were

Baptists may have done, and have done certainly, horrible and wicked things, but as a movement our people were never involved in the mass persecution and violent torture and death of anyone.

So we don't want to be broad -brushed with the martyrdom of individuals that Rome had perpetrated, so therefore we should be treating our neighbors like we expect to be treated, and therefore we should not be broad -brushing recklessly all

Muslims in one lump. That was a very long way of asking you for a response on that very thing.

Right. I would agree with Dr. White that we have to be very careful that we don't broad -brush people.

It's the old guilt by association, and that is not to say that every single

Muslim out there is a terrorist, or that every single Muslim agrees with what happened in Orlando, and so forth, but I think that we have to make an important distinction, and this is something

I always teach my students, is we need to distinguish between Muslims and Islam. Muslims are people,

Muslims are made in the image of God, whether they acknowledge it or not, they're human beings with feelings, with needs, with children, with families, with the same things that we struggle with in life, and so forth, and so we're not here to critique the

Muslim as a person. What I do is I ask the question, what does the ideology teach?

What does Islam teach? What do the sources say? What do they bear out? And so I think it is important that we don't conclude that every single

Muslim on the face of the earth is a terrorist, or that they are in agreement with ISIS, or Al -Qaeda, or Boko Haram, and so forth, but I think we need to go back and look at the ideology that is fueling this.

Now what we do know about the Islamic sources is that the concept of jihad is deeply entrenched in Islam, in the

Quran, in the Hadith, and so forth, in the four schools of Islam, of jurisprudence as we know them, both in Sunni Islam and in Shia Islam.

And so I think it's important that we look at the ideology and critique the ideology, that we do not take every single

Muslim, put them in the same category, and simply dismiss them. And that would indeed be a

Christian. We have to go to a break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.

Tony Costa on Islam in the aftermath of the horrific massacre in Orlando, Florida this past Sunday, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and obviously, especially with a sensitive issue like this, if it makes you feel better to remain anonymous, you may do so.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com We'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

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LindbrookBaptist .org. That's LindbrookBaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. Tomi Costa, Professor of Apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

Our theme today is Islam and Terrorism Why Has Muhammad's Religion Made Our World a

More Dangerous Place? A Necessary Discussion in the Aftermath of the Orlando Massacre when

Victims are in Flagrant Rebellion against God. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com ChrisArnzen at gmail .com

One thing that you said during your description of the individual who committed this mass murder on Sunday in relation to his religion or his claimed religion

Islam is that it views homosexuality as a very evil and unnatural practice.

I'm not sure if that was the exact wording you used but it was obviously very similar to what you said. Now, we as Christians believe that identically and we even can point to the

Old Testament to where there were certainly death penalties ascribed by God Himself for people who are unrepentant and behaving in such a fashion.

How do you respond to that reality when not only

Muslims will bring that up to us but you'll have liberals of all sorts who remind us of that and for some reason we just lost connection and although we are still recording

I don't know why we went off the air. Welcome back.

We are back on the air and hopefully we will remain back on the air.

I don't know what kind of evil force out there is tracking the activity of Dr. Tony Costa but the second time that I am aware of that we have ever gone off the air midstream during a live broadcast, at least during the new show that we've been airing since 2015 the only guest that this has happened with is

Dr. Tony Costa so I'm not really sure why if that was just quote quote coincidence or not.

But as I was asking you before we went off the air it is obvious that Islam views the wicked or the activity of homosexuality as very wicked unnatural something that is very displeasing in the sight of God and something that is worthy of a death penalty.

Now we as Christians also believe that. I mean obviously with the exception of a minority of Christians today most

Bible -believing born -again evangelicals don't believe that homosexuals should be arrested and sentenced to death in the new covenant that we are now living in but having said that we do still believe it is a sin worthy of death because of what

God himself prescribed for that sin in the Old Testament which we view as equally inspired and inerrant as the

New Testament. So if you could explain that dilemma that seems to be in existence whenever we as Christians criticize

Muslims for their violent acts today. Right. Well Muslims usually commit what we call a categorical fallacy where they simply collapse the

Old and the New Testament together. Remember what Jesus said you don't put fresh wine in two old wineskins because it will burst.

There's something new, there's something better that the Messiah Jesus brought in the New Covenant and they also do this with the wars in the

Old Testament to justify Jihad and so forth and what we have to point out is we need to contextualize these passages and point out that the death penalty for homosexuality in Leviticus 18 and 20 were commandments that were given under the theocratic rule of God with his covenant people

Israel that was mediated through Moses and so this was a theocracy it was a different kind of government it was not a democracy, it was a theocracy where God ruled with his laws and the people entered into this covenant with God.

Now under the New Covenant of course we're no longer under the law of Moses, we're under the law of Christ, we're under the

New Covenant promised by the Old Testament prophets and so in the New Covenant you don't have legislation to execute adulterers and murderers, murderers yes but not adulterers and Sabbath breakers and rebellious sons and sorcerers and idolaters all of these were federal capital offenses under the

Mosaic Law and so we're under a New Covenant but the New Testament Christologically interprets these passages and so even though we don't execute people for breaking the

Sabbath today if you reject the Sabbath of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, you will face eternal death and all of these other laws the spiritual aspect still applies, the wages of sin is death,

Romans 6 23 and so what we need to tell our Muslim friends is that we are no longer under the

Old Covenant, this is not we're not under a theocracy we're under a New Covenant and so it's a categorical fallacy for them to force these

Old Testament laws on the church because they need to understand that these laws have a place and time but the spiritual aspect of these laws still apply

Christologically well let me ask you a question I don't want to sidetrack our whole discussion here but you said something that made me kind of jolt in my chair a little bit do we believe as Christians or do you believe that someone who has a different view of the

New Testament Sabbath than you do is going to experience spiritual death, meaning damnation if they are not in compliance with an actual

Sabbath day if they perhaps are a part of the New Covenant theology camp or someone which believes that Christ is the

Sabbath and we don't have a particular day set apart other than when we gather publicly as a corporate body of believers yeah

I personally don't find any evidence in the New Testament for the Sabbath commandment is the only commandment out of the 10 that is never reinforced or repeated in the

New Testament, all the other 9 are, and I don't see any commandment in the New Testament for Christians to observe the

Sabbath day what I see in the New Testament is that Jesus is identified as the Sabbath he calls us to himself and he will give us rest, and the subject of the observance of days,

Paul says that in Romans 14 where he talks about that whoever observes the day to the

Lord he observes it, he doesn't specify which day he's talking about, he doesn't call it the Sabbath, he doesn't call it the

Lord's day, and so in terms of I'm not a Sabbaturian myself

I guess I misunderstood something that you said, that was all yeah, ok, that's fine so therefore we there would be one way of differentiating the violence that clearly exists in the

Old Covenant in regard to death penalty laws and so on that extend beyond death penalty for murder, and therefore there is also another thing that should be taken into consideration when it comes to even

Islam as Dr. White had pointed out on his show The Dividing Line that vigilantism and maverick, lone maverick wolves committing the or executing those that are in violation of Islamic law including what we had just heard about on Sunday where over 50 people were executed for the crime of homosexuality allegedly that is something that Islam as a religion and as a culture according to Dr.

White was not something that was condoned or practiced that they never would have been able to build the civilizations that they did if they were permitting and even commanding vigilantes to run around and execute people at will.

Could you respond to that differentiation? Yes, well, again the whole concept of Sharia jurisprudence of course can be quite complicated but again we have to put this into the context of the caliphate that ISIS claims to have and when you have a caliphate and the caliph who is the successor of Mohammed as the head of state in the

Islamic empire if someone pleads allegiance to ISIS and the caliphate issues orders to fight the infidels by shooting them, by stabbing them and so forth then if you plead allegiance to Abu Bakr al -Baghdadi who is the current caliph of ISIS then these acts are condoned and in fact they are encouraged.

Now in the early history of Islam there were vigilantes, there were individuals who would kill critics of Mohammed, they would kill those who insulted the prophet and so forth and they received the approval of Mohammed as doing the noble thing of getting rid of his enemies and critics and so forth.

So there is precedence for these individual vigilante acts within the history of Islam, especially the early period of Mohammed's companions but I think the fact here is that this man pledged allegiance to ISIS and he was simply following orders to kill and to maim in North America and Europe.

Has it been established that there was definitely an ISIS connection? I mean there are obviously serial killers and nuts and fanatics who will make a claim of something that has them connected to a far greater entity than they are.

Right, it has not yet, I mean they're still investigating it is not yet, the connection has not yet been made.

But it's interesting that in the most recent space of violence that has been going on these

Muslims have all been claiming this allegiance to the Caliph. So in terms of actually connecting the dots at this point no, they're still under investigation.

And so also I'd like you to define Jihad, we always hear that word bantered about in the media every day it seems because of the fact that the world is on the edge of our collective seats watching as every day we hear about some kind of an act of atrocity, at least it seems like it's every day,

I may be exaggerating, but it certainly seems that the rapidity of these events is nearly daily.

But Jihad is something we always hear about explain that and define that if you could. Yeah, the Arabic word

Jihad literally means struggle. To struggle, to strive. And historically

Muslims have interpreted Jihad in two ways. They've argued that Jihad can refer to the struggle with sin, the struggle with your passions and so forth almost a

Lutheran strife with the flesh and the spirit and so forth almost in that type of a context.

But Jihad has been used primarily in the context of striving in the way of Allah, striving against the unbeliever, striving against the enemies of Allah.

And it is considered the greatest noble act that a Muslim can accomplish is to fight in the way of Allah, to kill in the way of Allah, to struggle in the way of Allah.

And it's always used in the context of tension and conflict. So now that we've sort of gotten some background and definitions down, how do you respond to the charge that what we are seeing in an act like Orlando, Florida and other places, numerous events that we could cite, are they the acts of men who are not only evil men in the sight of God and of the onlooking world, but are they also evil men in the sight of authentic Islam?

Have they hijacked Islam, distorted it, twisted it, made it something that it was never intended to be, or at least an exaggerated form of it?

Or are these people, for the most part, and I know you really do have to take cases individually, but are many of these atrocities we are hearing about completely in harmony with what

Muhammad would have expected of his disciples were he to be alive today?

Yeah, I think it all depends again how we define authentic Islam. How do we define Christianity? We define Christianity by the lenses of Scripture.

How do we define Islam? It has to be defined by the Quran, the Hadith, and what's called the

Sunnah, the model of the Prophet. And I think that if we consider the fact that in the

Islamic world view, there are two places. You are either in one of these two. So, you are either in what's called

Dar al -Islam, which means the abode of Islam, the abode of submission to Allah, which would include

Islamic countries that have Sharia law, or you're in what's called the Dar al -Harb, which is the abode of war, the house of war.

You're either in one of those two camps. So, if you live in North America, or in Europe, or in Australia, you are not living under Sharia law, and so you are living in the house of war, which means that every

Muslim who lives in a country that is not under the law of Allah is at war with that country, either spiritually or physically, mentally, and so, in that context, the

Muslim has to strive for one thing. The Quran says that every Muslim, when he migrates, and we don't have time to go into the whole migration of Muhammad to Hijra, which is the basis for Muslim migration today, the

Muslim must migrate on one condition, that he will expand the religion of Allah into infidel lands.

If he does not do so, he will be judged severely on the Day of Judgment for that. And so, the way some

Muslims see it is that the United States, Canada, England, have declared war on Islam.

The Quran says that those who do mischief in the land, and in that context referring to Muslim lands, their penalty is that they be crucified, that they have their limbs amputated, that they be killed, and that they be humiliated.

And so, there are Muslims today who are very well aware of the fact that every

Friday on the day, the special day of prayer, there is a prayer that the Imam says every single

Friday around the mosque, around the globe, where they call on Allah to aid the Mujahideen, which are the

Jihad warriors, so that his religion, his Deen, the Deen of Allah, the religion of Allah, will become supreme.

So, when we look at the Quran, we look at the last chapters of the Quran, which are believed to abrogate the earlier ones, it's very clear

Chris, that the Quran calls for a global mandate to subjugate the unbelievers and to impose the

Sharia law over them. And so, when I look at ISIS and when I see them burning homosexuals, throwing homosexuals from rooftops and then stoning them, they are following chapter and verse every single mandate or law that is given in the

Hadith towards the punishment of homosexuals. And they are being consistent with the text.

Even in a vigilante type of way. Hold on a second, Buzz, I think you're turned down. Yeah, even in a vigilante sort of way?

Yes, as I pointed out earlier, in the early years of Islam, Mohammed actually approved of vigilante killings of his enemies, where his enemies were put to death for simply writing against him or mocking him.

We just saw that in Paris with the Charlie Hebdo attacks, where two Muslims shot down the artists and those involved in the

Charlie Hebdo magazine. These were vigilantes, and they cried out that we have avenged the

Prophet Mohammed. There are cases where vigilanteism was approved by Mohammed himself.

Now, since you are in the apologetic world and are frequently actually in dialogue and discussion and debate with leading

Muslim clerics and apologists, what are they saying about this?

Are they agreeing that this is indeed a fruit of obedient Islam that is faithful to the

Quran and the Hadith, or are they saying that this is an aberration? For the most part, the men that you would confront,

I know that Shabir Ali, some people consider him more on the liberal end of Islam, but if you could comment about those that you have engaged in discussion and debate in the apologetic arena.

Well, Shabir Ali in particular will say that Islam is a religion of peace, and he would say that the war passages in the

Quran were simply situational, that is they only apply to the time of Mohammed, and of course he has he has said this to in some cases in opposition to what a lot of Muslim scholarship has said on the subject, and when you deal with the

Hadith Shabir has actually called the Hadith into question and said well we really can't trust these documents because they're over 200 years after Mohammed and so he has even dismissed the

Hadith sources which is very surprising. Now what Muslim group is he a member of?

Well, he's a Sunni but he holds to a couple of positions doctrinally that are very very suspect.

The crucifixion of Christ is one of them, isn't it? Exactly. He believes in the swoon theory that Jesus was actually crucified but he did not die on the cross, he swooned on the cross which goes against classical

Islam interpretation. Yeah, they don't even believe he ever was nailed to the cross. No, no, the

Quran is very emphatic, it says which means he was not crucified nor was he killed.

So it's very emphatic negated. So Shabir holds to that, but then there are other clerics who will obfuscate, they will change the subject and say well what about the whole

Palestinian issue with the Israelis and what about the Crusades and so what they end up doing is not dealing with the subject but turning the tables and trying to prove that Christianity has a sordid past as well.

And so what I've gotten is either no, this is an aberration to well, Islam is really religion of peace and so there's a reformist movement in Islam that wants to reform

Islam and that faces a lot of challenges because how do you reform something that is believed to be perfectly revealed from Allah and permanent?

And so I've received a variety of answers that these guys are not representing Islam to obfuscation where they simply change the subject and turn it into the

Israeli -Palestinian conflict to we need to reform in Islam and so forth.

But then again, Chris, there is the question of piquia and the principle of piquia is that if Muslims feel that they are under attack or their faith is under attack, the

Quran permits them to suppress truthful information from the unbeliever.

And so the question is are some of these Muslims practicing piquia?

Yeah, you're not talking about Jose Cuervo, you're talking about something completely different. Right, I'm not talking about tequila with the worm at the bottom of the bottle.

Right, right. I'm talking about an Arabic word, piquia, which means to withhold to suppress information when you are under duress.

And so the Quran teaches and some of the greatest scholars of Islam, like Ibn Kathir said, that piquia basically says that we smile at you with our faces but we curse you in our hearts and that piquia will exist until the day of resurrection, that is, until the end of the world.

So the question is we've got a group in the United States, CARE, for instance, the

Council of American Islamic Relations, which is linked to Hamas, which is a recognized terrorist organization.

There's movements right now in the US that is trying to classify them as a Muslim Brotherhood entity and to ban them.

But you have a group like that who has links to Hamas and they have refused publicly to condemn

Hamas. They will not condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization, but then they will condemn Orlando and all of these other acts.

So, again, you're left wondering what's going on here. So I need to bring up the fact that piquia, the idea of not holding back truthful information from the copper is permissible in Islam.

Yeah, in fact, it would be then the exact opposite of tequila, because when you drink tequila, you tell too many things that should be hidden.

Yes, exactly. When your feelings are, yes, of course, when you are intoxicated, that's when the truth usually comes out.

Well, anyway, I apologize if I'm using humor during a very serious discussion, but I don't think... No, I'm not a

Methodist, that's okay. But we're going to take a break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air, we do have a couple of people patiently waiting to have their questions asked and answered on the air.

We thank you for your patience. But if you'd like to join them with questions of your own for our guest,

Dr. Tony Costa, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com

And please include your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA, but if it makes you feel more comfortable to remain anonymous, we welcome you to do so, and we are going to be right back with Dr.

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That's the Thriving Story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Zarnes and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron. For the last hour and the next hour to come, we have as our guest today,

Dr. Tony Costa, and he is Professor of Apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary in Canada.

We have been discussing the religion of Islam in light of the horrific events that occurred in Orlando last

Sunday, where a nightclub frequented by homosexuals and apparently a hub of homosexual activism where leaders in homosexual activism regularly commune and celebrate and strategize and do all kinds of things as those who are the movers and shakers in that movement.

No pun intended because it's a nightclub. And these were the victims.

Obviously, there were probably even heterosexuals among them who were slain by this very evil person.

So we have a lot to discuss today, and I hope that we could get a good portion of what

I was hoping to address covered in the next hour. We do have a listener in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, Tyler, who asked,

Do you think that since homosexuality and Islam are both anti -gospel, should we as Christians view both ideologies as the same as an offense to the

God of the Bible? That's Tyler in Mastic Beach. Well, homosexuality, of course, is a deviant sexual act which is condemned in Scripture.

Islam is an ideology, and it is also anti -God because it has a different God.

Allah is not the God of the Bible, and the Jesus of Islam is not the

Jesus of the Bible. So, obviously, they're both anti -God, but the difference is that one is a sexual deviant practice, an abominable practice defined by Scripture, and the other one is a blasphemous ideology that opposes the

Cross of Christ, His Resurrection, and the Gospel. So, in that sense, it would be anti -God, anti -Christ.

And there are, I think, one of the reasons why, I don't know, I can't read

Tyler's mind, but one of the reasons I would think that that would be an interesting question to bring about is because of the fact there are mainstream religions, even those that are considered conservative, that view

Islam as just another pathway to God, like, for instance, the

Roman Catholic Church in their catechism. They state clearly in the Roman Catholic Catechism, the most recent one, that Muslims adore the same one true

God as we Christians do. Now, I even know conservative

Roman Catholics who abhor that and disagree with that very much.

But there are those though that would give

Islam a pass because, hey, they are trying to love

God as best as they know how. That's what they've been raised with, that's what they've been taught, and therefore they're not rejecting

God, they're not atheists, we should give them a pass. But this is repugnant in the sight of God, just as homosexuality, even though they're two different kinds of sins.

Am I right? Yes, yes, they're definitely two different kinds of sins, but they say that the way to hell is paid with good intentions.

And this idea that is very attractive today, that even Pope Francis has been pumping today, is the idea of syncretism, or pluralism, that all views are equally valid and all roads lead to God, and so forth.

And those of us who read our Bibles know that that notion is just patently false. The Lord Jesus made it clear that even the

Samaritan woman, who was a monotheist, who worshipped in her mind the one true God, Jesus turned to her and said, you know not what you worship, and that she needed

Him. And so there is no other way to God save through the one whom

He has appointed, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. So good intentions are not a guarantee of salvation.

You need the Lord Jesus Christ. OK, going back to what we were discussing before the break, are there any respected

Islamic scholars that you have engaged in dialogue or debate with, who affirm and applaud various acts of terrorism around the globe at the hands of ISIS and others?

Not any that I know, and I think that they wouldn't want to do that, especially in a

Western country, being videotaped. But there are people like Anjum Chaudhry, for instance, in the

United Kingdom who is open and blatant in support of terrorism and ISIS, and in fact claims that the

West deserves what it has coming to them and that America deserved 9 -11 and London deserved 7 -7.

So the only one that I know who is openly pro -terrorism and makes public statements about that would be

Anjum Chaudhry, the cleric in London, England. Now, he was arrested, wasn't he? Isn't he in prison?

He was. He was arrested. Is he still in prison? I believe he's been freed, but I think he has to return for trial, for a trial case.

OK. Now, I keep bringing up our colleague Dr. White, or your colleague and my friend. I don't want to put myself on the same pier as you guys.

But he is convinced that a number of the men that he debates against, who he actually has developed friendships with, he is convinced.

Obviously, he cannot read their minds or their hearts. He is not Christ. But he is pretty convinced that a good number of them are not practicing taqiyya when they are saying that they abhor these kinds of things.

What do you make of that? I mean, do we always have to have a question mark hovering over our heads when it comes to relations with Muslims?

Well, my whole issue is, and I know Dr. White is very emphatic on this, and that is the question of consistency.

And so, I have a Muslim friend here in Toronto who's a gentleman. He's from Iran. And I ask him, am

I your friend? And he says, well, of course you are. And I ask him, why in the Quran, chapter 5, verse 51, does it say, take not the

Jews and the Christians as friends, for they are only friends to one another, and whoever makes friends with them is under a law of punishment or curse.

And of course, he tells me that that text doesn't really mean what it says. But it's very clear that the

Islamic sources tell Muslims to not befriend Jews and Christians. It tells them, in fact, to fight the people of the

Book until they recognize Muhammad as the Prophet of Allah and so forth. And so, this is my question.

I have met a lot of admirable Muslim apologists. But the question is consistency.

If Jihad is no longer applicable today, then why do they keep following the

Sharia law? Why do women cover themselves up by the same rule that calls for Jihad and subjugation of unbelievers and so forth?

But then again, there are people like, for instance, remember Schindler during the Second World War. He was an official party member of the

Nazi Party. But, he did not live in conformity with the terms of the

Nazi Party, one of which was, of course, to have Jews handed over to the authorities.

What did Schindler do? Schindler saved many, many Jews from their deaths against the

Party rule. Even a military hero, even a military hero according to Germany, like Rommel, he was not in harmony with Hitler's idea.

Right, and to this day, Schindler is considered, by the Jews, he's considered a righteous

Gentile who has a place in the world to come. But there are Muslims who truly do want to see reform.

They want to reform Islam. One of them has even suggested, I was reading an article today, Chris, where a

Muslim writer in the newspaper was saying, why don't we apply the peaceful verses of the Quran and basically set aside all the violent verses of the

Quran. But the last time that cleric said that, I believe he was from Morocco or Tunisia, he was killed as an apostate.

And so, can Islam be reformed? That's the question. And in order to reform

Islam, what does that mean? Well, that means they're going to have to set aside certain regulations in the

Quran. That flies against the whole Sharia law. Right, and in many ways, it is like,

I know that my Roman Catholic friends are going to be highly offended by this comparison, but, for instance,

I have moderate to liberal Catholic friends who get very annoyed when

I bring up the Council of Trent's anathemas against me and everybody else who would share the gospel of the

Reformation. And I say to them, when they get angry with me and consider some of my attitudes bigoted, because I refuse to embrace them as my brothers in Christ, even if they are my dear friends,

I remind them that I was anathematized centuries ago, before I was born, by Rome's mandate in Trent.

And they will say, well, we're centuries beyond Trent. A lot has happened since Trent.

We've got Vatican II, where relations with Rome and Protestants are completely different.

But my point back to them is always, yeah, but that's dogma. Trent is dogma. You cannot erase what the infallible magisterium has declared and defined as dogma without the whole system of Rome collapsing.

Once you remove the infallible magisterium and the dogmas it has pronounced and defined, then there is no

Rome. There's no more Roman Catholic Church. Right, and Vatican II in fact ratified

Trent, because Vatican II kept going back to Trent and quoting Trent. So if Trent was abrogated or done away with, then why is

Vatican II appealing to it? Right, and obviously Vatican II was speaking out of both sides of its mouth, its proverbial mouth.

Because they were calling us separated brethren, whereas Trent was saying that we were clearly not even

Christian. That's right. So these really confuse issues, and so in the light of this, what we've been discussing so far,

I do want to move on to God's sovereignty in light of horrific events like Sunday.

But your average person, even your average Christian, I mean, we are called upon to know our

Bibles, and to study them, and to live by them, and to devour the words of Scripture so that they are living inside of us, and ooze out of every pore of our being.

But not all of us have time to become scholars on the religion of Islam. So when we hear about things like this, when we hear about atrocities being committed by people shouting al -Akhbar and, excuse me for the mispronunciation, but people who are identifying themselves as Muslim, who are identifying themselves as ISIS, what should the response be?

Are we to not say, see this is due to an inherent problem of Islam, or how do we avoid broad brushing and slandering while at the same time revealing and exposing evil, etc.?

Well, I think we have to come back to the question of what is the ideology that is fueling these types of actions?

And it's not, and every time we do hear of these terrorist attacks, whether it's

Belgium, or whether it's Paris, or whether it's Orlando, or whether it was 9 -11, you will notice that there's a pattern here.

And the elephant in the room here is that these are Muslims. We're not hearing of Buddhist terrorists, we're not hearing of Hindu terrorists, or Christian terrorists, or Jewish terrorists.

We're hearing a consistent, a consistent drumbeat, and that is that those who act to slay are doing so for the sake of Allah, and they're doing so to wage war against the hacker, the unbelievers.

And so what we need to ask is, while the media keeps saying that this is just, these are just mentally ill people, why is there always mental illness in one camp?

Why aren't there other cases of mental illness among other religious groups? Why this camp? And so I think we need to ask the question is, what is the ideology behind these terrorists?

Where are they getting the idea that it's permissible to kill unbelievers in the name of Allah while you're crying out

Allahu Akbar? So that is what we have to get at. That is what we really need to get our hands on.

Unless we understand what these people are doing, we're never going to be able to confront them or to fight this.

And well, I think that we should probably move on to another very important aspect of this discussion.

That is in regard to the sovereignty of God in the midst of atrocities, in the midst of all kinds of evil we see taking place around us in the world.

Now, unlike the World Trade Center where you had thousands of people, unidentified people, we have no idea about their backgrounds, what religion they embraced, if any, whether they were faithful to their spouses, whether they were heterosexual or homosexual.

There was obviously a great mix of people in the World Trade Center and many other places where mass murders and atrocities have been committed.

Here you have a situation in Orlando where this nightclub was a well -known hub of activity for those especially involved in the sin of sodomy, homosexuality, however you want to phrase it.

And not only that, not just apparently according to the news reports, not only just a social place of gathering and entertainment and dancing and drinking and enjoying oneself, it was apparently almost an

Orlando headquarters, if you will, perhaps maybe not even almost, but according to the reporters that I keep hearing, this was a hub of thought and strategy and that kind of thing for activism, for activists who gathered their leaders who publicly identified themselves politically and socially as leaders of a homosexual movement.

They were using this location as a headquarters of sorts.

And this was the location where this horrific event took place, where a person identifying himself as Muslim killed over 50 people and wounded over 50 more and would have probably enjoyed to kill everyone in the building.

As Christians, we know that God is in sovereign control over every event that ever occurs, and this is where as theologically reformed

Christians we would be in sharp disagreement with many of our professing brothers and sisters who would actually say that we are out of our minds or we are in sin to dare to say that God was involved in some way in this atrocity taking place.

How do you respond to that, Dr. Tony? What I would say is that God is absolutely sovereign over everything that happens, whether it's good or bad, and that nothing escapes

God's purview. As Dr. Arsenault rightly put it, there is no renegade molecule in the universe that God is not aware of.

And so what I would say is that the sovereignty of God assures us that things do not happen by accident, that even in this massacre, there is a purpose, there is a meaning.

We may not see it at this point, because we see the small picture, God sees the big picture. But what

I would do is I would encourage people to look at Luke 13 where Jesus talks there about a very interesting event there.

If I can just quote it quickly, Chris, if I have time. Luke 13 verse 1, there were some present at that very time who told him,

Jesus, about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and he answered them,

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?

No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. That's Luke 13 verses 1 to 5.

So, the Lord Jesus is talking here about these tragedies, about Pilate taking the blood of these

Jews and mingling them with their sacrifices, or the tower in Siloam that fell on 18 people and killed them.

Now, notice Jesus doesn't go into why did God allow this to happen, if there's a good

God, why do evil things happen? Jesus simply says, these things happen, and our response should not be a question of theodicy or a philosophical inquiry as to why evil things happen.

Our response should be that we are all sinners before a holy God, that these bad things don't happen because these people were worse offenders or were sinners than we are, but these are lessons to teach us that our lives are short -lived, they're vulnerable, and that our response should be one of repentance.

Unless we repent, we will perish. And I think that we have to understand that in the sovereignty of God, there is a reason for this, because if God is not sovereign,

Christ, then what happened this past Sunday is absolutely meaningless. The lives of these people are meaningless, including the life of this

Muslim gentleman who killed himself, excuse me, who killed these people and was killed in return.

Now, one might say, especially a Christian, might say, now, wait a minute,

I agree with everything you said, but there is a difference because when you have hurricanes and floods that have taken the lives of many in Mississippi and Louisiana and other places in our country and other places in the world where you have churches being swept away in flood and fire and you have

Christians as well as Muslims and Jews and homosexuals and all kinds of people altogether perishing, there is, some would say, there is a difference between that and some place that is a known headquarters for homosexual activism having horrific calamity fall down upon it.

How do you respond to that differentiation because there is... Well, there is a differentiation, but Scripture never makes that differentiation.

That is a philosophical inquiry that people make with the problem of evil, and so the

Scriptures are very clear that God commands the seas, that God commands the winds, that even that nature itself is under God's direction.

And so, the Scriptures do not, they do not obfuscate God out of the picture but show that He is sovereign even in these things.

And so there are cases, yes, where Christians die in tornadoes and they die in hurricanes and earthquakes and so forth, but it's interesting that you see this in the case of Job, where Job loses his children,

Job loses his marriage, his wife leaves him, he loses his employment and so forth, but if you look behind the scenes, the one who is in absolute sovereign control over even the bad things that happen to Job was

God Himself, who permitted Satan to act as his agent, but it was God who was sovereignly in control of everything.

So, what I would say to this, Chris, is that the Scriptures do not address this.

The Scriptures simply tell us that God is absolutely sovereign, we do not know the mind of the

Lord, we are not His counselor, and there's nothing that we could tell

God that He does not know already or that He is not purposed. So, Deuteronomy 29 .29 the secret things belong to the

Lord our God and the things revealed belong to us and to our children. Now, what you're saying, would we also not rule out then the possibility that this was a judgment of God?

The bottom line of what you're saying is, we simply don't know what God's mind was on this, but it could have been a judgment, but maybe it wasn't.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Because the moment we say it was a judgment and let's say that there's a

Christian wedding taking place at a reception and the roof caves in, was that a judgment from God?

I mean, this is the thing. The Scriptures do not address these issues and we're in a position where Jonathan Edwards warned us that we're not to pry into the mind of the

Almighty when it comes to issues pertaining to His decrees. We're going to be taking our final break and this is your last opportunity to join us on the air with a question.

We do have a couple of people waiting again and we will get to you as soon as possible. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com chrisarnsen at gmail dot com c h r i s a r n z e n at gmail dot com and we hope to hear from you soon and we'll be right back with Dr.

Tony Costa. Hi, I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzin, if you just tuned us in. Our guest for the last 90 minutes has been

Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary. We are discussing the religion of Islam primarily in light of the tragic events that occurred in Orlando, Florida on Sunday at the hands of an assassin who took the lives of over 50 people and wounded over 50 more seriously and then was killed by police and if you'd like to join us on the air our email address is chrisarnzin at gmail .com

chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin chrisarnzin an establishment, a nightclub dedicated to their specific depravity in existence and having it being used as even a headquarters of activist strategy and activity and celebration.

Even if we could grant the fact that there are brethren who are like -minded with us in many ways and who hold that view, don't you think it's very very important though that we always make it clear to the population around us, even those who are practicing homosexuality, that we don't delight in such events.

We don't have a party and laugh and sing and celebrate when we hear about people being murdered who happen to be involved in a very serious sin.

And even though we believe that God is sovereign over the acts of even this assassin, we don't believe that you could call him

God's man as if he was some kind of a hero fulfilling

God's will. There are things that we have to make ourselves clear about because obviously people jump to conclusions when we as Christians expose evil acts like homosexuality as being evil and damnable and therefore they may think that we are wrongly saying that we are very happy that what took place occurred.

And obviously we even have to remember that those victims of that massacre were the sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and cousins and perhaps parents of people who are grieving, many of whom may even be

Christians, grieving the loss of these loved ones, and or even more in despair, doubting their eternal state because of their activities.

So this is not something we should take glibly by any stretch of the imagination. Am I right on those counts?

I think you're absolutely right. I think that we need to be cognizant of the fact that these were image bearers of God, even though they were in defiance against God.

The death of the wicked. And our response should be one of weeping for injustice committed not just by the homosexual community, but by this gross murderous act performed by this man.

We ought to be sorrowful that life was destroyed. Life is sacred.

It's a creation of God. It is something that we regard, again, human life is the image of God.

And so I think we need to be very careful that we do not become, like you said at the beginning of the program, pharisaic.

It's very easy to become pharisaic and assume that because this happened to these homosexuals, they were deserving of that.

And as you rightly stated in the Twin Towers in New York City, there were many people there who were brothers and sisters in Christ, and they perished.

And so when God acts in judgment, it's very clear in Scripture that when God sent the flood, he destroyed the whole world, saved

Noah and his family, and when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he completely destroyed the cities with fire and brimstone, salt and brimstone.

But I think we need to be careful we don't play judge, jury, and prosecutor in God's divine counsel when it comes to issues of this nature.

I think our response should be one of sorrow. I think when the Lord said, blessed are you who weep,

I think that weeping should involve weeping for a fallen world, weeping for a sinful world a sinful nation that we live in.

We are, as Isaiah the Prophet openly admitted, I am a man of unclean lips, living among an unclean people.

And I think we need to be careful that when we point our fingers, we need to be mindful of the fact we've got three fingers pointing back at us.

And I think we need to reflect on the fact that were it not for the grace of God, were it not for the grace of God, we would perish just as they did.

Yes, and wouldn't you say, and maybe I may sound like I'm contradicting something that you said, but I just might maybe want you to clarify it, wouldn't you say that there is a sense where they did, those people who perished in that building, they did deserve it, but we deserve it too?

It's only by grace that we were spared of it? Well, it's funny because in that passage in Luke 13, 1 -5, when the

Lord Jesus talks about the tariff by law falling on those 18 people and killing them, it's interesting.

The Lord didn't say they deserved it. He says, you think they were more wicked because they died in that tragedy?

Jesus doesn't even address that. He simply says, but unless you repent, you shall likewise perish.

And so I think we need to reserve judgment and just realize that our lives are so vulnerable.

We can be taken out in a car accident, we can be taken out in a heart attack, a stroke, and I think we must realize that we are at the mercy of God and His grace.

And so, once again, we're not better than our fellow men. The only thing that differentiates us from the world is a five -letter word, and that's grace.

We do have a question that is actually something that I brought up to Dr. Vody Baucom in New Jersey.

I was just at a conference over the last weekend. Reverend Buzz Taylor and I went to a conference that was conducted by Dr.

Vody Baucom at Grace Bible Church in Allenwood, New Jersey, and during a question -answer session

I asked the same question that our listener today, Harrison, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

He asks, don't you think that it is irresponsible and actually biblically incorrect for we

Christians to constantly make it appear as if homosexuality is the exact same thing as every other sin when we don't even discipline people that way in the church, nor did the nation of Israel discipline everyone the same way in the

Old Covenant. You are not going to have a pastor viewed in the same way if he is a glutton on occasion at company or church picnics as you would if he was a child molester.

Obviously all sins are not the same, and therefore don't you think it is irresponsible when

Christians discuss homosexuality as being just one of many other sins and that they are all equal in severity?

Well, I think I would agree that there are definitely degrees of sin. The Mosaic Lab didn't call for the execution of gluttons, but it did call for the execution of adulterers and murderers and homosexuals and idolaters and so forth.

But what I would say is that in terms of homosexuality in the church,

I think that pastors have to become aware that there are Christians who struggle with this, that Christians are not immune to these temptations just as much as they're not immune from lust of heterosexual sexual relations and or pornography and so forth.

I do think that our church, the church today, has put a lot of focus on homosexuality. Not that it is wrong to do so, but I think we also have to deal with the fact that we need to address other sexual sins like pornography, which is becoming a plague on the church, affecting pastors, affecting marriages.

I think we need to get tough with adultery and so forth, and I think that our churches have to start practicing biblical discipline.

And so homosexuality is one among many. It is a sin that God does call an abomination, because it attacks the ordinance of marriage, it attacks the model that God has defined humanity as, both male and female, as his image bearers.

But I think that the church has to also equally address other heinous sexual sins, like adultery and pornography, and deal with them together and realize the potential dangers that they pose.

So homosexuality is not the unpardonable sin, and I think we also have to become aware of the fact that it may be our daughters, it may be our sons who may struggle with same -sex attraction, and that's simply because we are all fallen creatures, we are all under sin.

Until we're set free by the Lord Jesus, we will struggle with these proclivities. And so I think we need to come to terms with that reality.

Well one of the things that I brought up to Dr. Balcombe, and he agreed with me, is that I thought that it was very wrong of Christians, even some conservative

Bible -believing Christians, who would very vocally oppose homosexuality as sin, but in many cases have bought into the rhetoric of the world, and even defined them as the gay community, and described them as if they are an ethnic, racial, or national group of people that have these intrinsic qualities to them, rather than the fact that these are individuals who are committing an unnatural and abominable act of sin.

Don't you think that we are really, perhaps unconsciously, following the lead of the secular media and the liberal activists who paint homosexuals in the brush of an ethnic group that deserves equal civil rights and so on, and that it just defeats the very purpose of identifying it as sin, and really even makes it appear as if these people are hopelessly enslaved to that identity until they die, because that's what they are, rather than it's a sin that they're behaving, or a sin that they're conducting or doing?

Right, no, I think he's absolutely right, and also they have borrowed the language of Dr.

Martin Luther King's, his whole civil rights movement, when he compared their struggle with that of black

Americans or African Americans, and I think that that's a false notion. All Americans, and I'm a

Canadian, but I'm speaking about the fact that in America, all Americans are afforded the rights under the

Constitution, and when we start saying, but we need to have certain rights for gays and lesbians because they're a minority, or we need to give them marriage rights as well, what we're doing there is we're going beyond the common equal rights that all

Americans share, and you're giving them special privileges, and now they're doing that with the transgendered movement, and there's even movements that are calling for the removal of pedophilia as a psychological disorder by the

American Psychological Association. There's movements asking to remove pedophilia because people who struggle with pedophilia are saying the very same thing.

They're born that way, they're wired that way, who are you to tell me who I am? This is who

I am, and now we've got people saying, well, I live in a man's body, but I'm actually a woman, or I'm a woman, but I'm really a man inside, and as you know, in the

United States, you have this huge battle with the whole transgendered bathrooms now, particularly at Target, but it's interesting,

Chris, is it not that we will allow children to decide their sexual gender, but we will not allow them to vote, we won't allow them to join the military, we won't allow them to drive a car, but we will allow them to define themselves sexually.

Well, I think we're living in some very perilous days. We are moving farther and farther from the roots that shaped our great countries.

Even up here in Canada, our Supreme Court made a ruling in a certain case that basically said that certain forms of bestiality are not illegal, so we are in deep trouble, morally speaking, we are in very, very deep trouble.

Yes, in case it went over the heads of some of our listeners, I think what you are touching on in regard to pedophilia is that it makes sense if laws are being rewritten that give children the right to get sexual reassignment surgery, as it has been called, or some other term that the liberals are using for it.

Gender clarification. Yeah, gender clarification or whatever. If a child... Confirmation. Yeah, right, right, gender confirmation.

If a child is responsible enough to make a decision in that regard, why shouldn't he have the freedom to make choices in regard to his or her sexual activity?

And it may include adults, so therefore it makes sense that these very twisted and wicked people who are pushing for the rights of children to get sexual reassignment or sex change or whatever you want to describe it, how that would hand -in -hand tear down any laws prohibiting pedophilia.

Right, precisely. And we do have

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who is asking, what is the climate in Canada like in regard to Islamic terror?

Are you as equally fearful as we in the United States are in other places in the globe?

Well, we have a prime minister, a new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who does not see the threat of Islam.

He thinks that the threat is sabotaged by these terrorists that belong to ISIS and so forth, and so I'm very concerned for Canada because we have a political leader who does not see this as a real threat.

And a couple of years ago, we did have our parliament in Ottawa attacked by a

Muslim militant. And so Canada is on the hairlines of Islamic terrorists.

Our former prime minister, Stephen Harper, who I was a huge supporter of, came out and claimed that Islamism was the major threat to Canada, and he received a lot of criticism, primarily from Islamic imams throughout

Canada. So, am I fearful? Well, I'm not fearful in the sense of we know we serve a sovereign

God, but I am gravely concerned for the way my country is treating this very serious threat.

And Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, has a similar question for a different matter.

He wants to know, I understand that the laws against hate speech in Canada are much stricter than the

United States, and there are pastors getting fined a lot of money for speaking out against homosexuality, even just by merely quoting

Bible verses which prohibit these sins without even mentioning the text themselves, but just the references.

And on billboards and things, they have been fined for this in Canada. If you could give your own commentary on that issue in your country.

Yes, Mike. We do have hate crime legislation in Canada, and one of the very first cases, the first case of hate crime prosecution, was a friend of mine who is now with the

Lord. His name was Mark Harding. And the Muslims had him charged with spreading hatred of Islam.

And he was the first case in Canada where this law was applied. Now, you're absolutely right.

There have been cases, for example, in the province of Saskatchewan, a Christian woman was putting biblical verses in the local newspaper from Romans 1, 1

Corinthians 6, Leviticus 18 and 20. And the Human Rights Commission in that province of Saskatchewan someone from the gay person took her to court and was ordered to remove and desist from submitting any quotations from the

Bible that were against homosexuality. So, what does that communicate to us?

Well, what it communicates to us is that the Bible is slowly becoming hate literature in Canada.

And the same thing is beginning to happen in the United States when the mayor of Houston wants to vet all the sermon notes of the pastors, particularly those who speak against homosexuality.

We know that the freedom of speech is on its last legs. against those who have different opinions, beliefs, and lifestyles.

And yet, they will very often condemn us with even a more severe form of hatred than we ever express towards them and their own beliefs and practices.

It's amazing that there seems to be this blinder on where they don't even recognize how hypocritical they are.

And I have to point that out nearly every time I'm in a discussion with somebody who opposes

Christianity when they accuse Christianity as being a religion of hate, just like they will say

Islam. Some of them will say that about Islam, although you have liberals who ironically will uphold

Islam as a beautiful religion and condemn Christianity as a religion of hate. It just makes no sense at all when the liberals would be the first one to be marched to the chopping block if the

Muslims had Sharia law in this country and other places. But anyway, if you could comment on the blinders, it seems, that the world around us...

So the ACLU, which I commonly call the Atheist Communist Liberals United, they went out of their way to blame the

Christian Right, and some of them even blamed the National Rifle Association. But whatever you do, don't blame the elephant in the room.

Try to attack Christianity, and this is exactly what we see. It's a form of what we call

Cultural Marxism, where Islam is the friend of the Left, and Christianity and its colonization history has to be called out, its white privilege status has to be condemned and called out.

And I guess you, I'm assuming you would agree with me that we have, as Christians, we have to control our rage in our righteous indignation, even though we are very right to have righteous indignation, that's why it's called righteous indignation.

But we have to put a control switch on it, because we have to constantly be reminded that they are called the lost for a reason.

They are blind and deaf to the truth. They are demonstrating that they are not sheep who hear

Christ's voice until that time that they become regenerate and begin following Him.

We can identify them as being outside of the flock, and therefore they don't have the

God -given insight that we have, and vision that we have, and ears that we have, because we have only received them by God's grace ourselves, because He performed heart surgery on us out of His own kindness, grace, and mercy, and has not done so with them at least yet.

So don't we have to constantly remind ourselves to be more patient in our reaction?

Absolutely, because at one time we were like that, weren't we? Before we came to Christ, we were children of wrath, we fulfilled our own desires and so forth, and so there has to be a degree of compassion that they're acting according to their natural inclinations, and what we see in our world today is total depravity in action.

That's all it is. And I'm going to go five minutes over because of the fact that we went off the air unintentionally for reasons that we don't know.

I'm going over five minutes today, and even if we go off the air before that five minutes begins,

I am still recording it. So basically, right now,

I would definitely want you, Dr. Tony, to summarize everything that you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today regarding this subject, and perhaps even after that, if you would, please conclude with a special word to the families of the victims of that atrocity.

And also the surviving victims who may eventually hear this recording, you never know within God's sovereignty how this program might wind up within earshot of someone who is an actual surviving victim or the parent or sibling or child of someone who perished in that nightclub on Sunday.

If you could, Dr. Tony. Let me just say that we need to distinguish between Islam and Muslims, and I love

Muslims. In fact, I've taken the word Islam as an abbreviation for I sincerely love all

Muslims. Ah, that's great. I love that. I've never heard that before. Yeah, and I do.

I love Muslims, and I'm calling on my brothers and sisters in Christ out there to love our Muslim neighbors.

Jesus said to love your enemies, to love those who persecute you and insult you, to pray for them, to bless and not to curse.

And I think this is imperative. Muslims are human beings. They are image bearers of God. What we are critiquing is the ideology, the ideology of Islam.

And therefore, it's not Islamophobic to question the ideology. In fact, the term

Islamophobia really makes no sense because a phobia, by definition, is an irrational fear.

We don't have an irrational fear of Islam. It's healthy to have rational fears of things that can harm you, but we're not

Islamophobic. And the term Islamophobia was created by the Muslim Brotherhood as a way to censure any type of criticism of Islam.

So please be aware that to criticize an ideology is not to be hateful. We are called to test all things.

So please love your Muslim neighbor. Pray for them. When you see Muslims in your neighborhood, pray for their salvation and pray for an opening for the

Gospel. And for those who've lost their family members and their children, their brothers and sisters, parents perhaps and so forth, what we want to say is that we grieve with you.

Our condolences, our deepest condolences go out to you. But what we want you to know is that God is still sovereign.

God is still on the throne. Nothing happens by accident. And the life of these people, and even their deaths, are not meaningless.

They have meaning. And the only relief that you will have is in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the answer to the world's ills. The answer is not at a bottle or in the bottle.

The answer is not in drugs or narcotics. The answer is Jesus Christ. And I pray that this moment would be a moment that you would surrender your life to Jesus Christ, repent of your sins, believe that He died on the

Cross of Calvary, He was raised again, and you will have peace with God.

You will know what it's like to have peace with God. Your life will be filled with meaning and purpose. And I pray that you would make that submission to Jesus Christ today.

Today is the day of salvation. Do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today. Amen. And I know that the website for Toronto Baptist Seminary is tbs .edu.

That's tbs .edu. Do you have any other contact information? Well, they'd like my website, tonycosta .webs

.com. It's all one word, tonycosta .webs .com.

That's W -E -B as in boy, S as in Sam, dot com. Correct. Correct. tonycosta .webs

.com. Well, Dr. Tony Costa, as always, it has been a great privilege and honor to have you as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron.

I eagerly look forward to having you come back on the program. I eagerly look forward to having you fly out here to the

Carlisle, Pennsylvania area to conduct debates, to conduct conferences, and other kinds of speaking engagements.

Our listeners may be delighted to know that we are in the process of arranging a debate between Dr.

Costa and a noted Roman Catholic apologist right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on the subject of the sinlessness of Mary.

So, we hope that the Lord enables us to arrange that, and we hope that as many of you listening can attend that.

And so, Dr. Costa, thank you so much, and we can't wait to have you back. Thank you so much,

Brother Chris, and Reverend Bosley, it was an honor to be with you, and look forward to it again. And I want everybody listening to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater