Dividing Line from Edwards, Colorado

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

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

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

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

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

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James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line, coming to you live from Evergreen, Colorado today.

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We have a much stronger internet connection, so hopefully we won't have too much Max Headroom type stuff taking place.

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Actually, when did Max, when was that on? Max Headroom was a long time ago, a lot of our young folks, we have a lot of young listeners probably have no earthly idea what

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Max Headroom is and therefore that particular illustration is probably not as good as it used to be.

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But anyway, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. If you would like to call in, we'll take some calls at the beginning of the hour if we have callers.

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Otherwise, we'll be going into a further response to Sami Zatari. So you sort of have your shot at the beginning of the program.

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And one of the topics might well be the fact that I was sort of talked into today, watching the chat channel, especially when

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I travel is somewhat of a distracting thing. There's some interesting new folks in the channel today that are making interesting comments.

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But anyways, I was talked into going ahead and posting today rather than waiting for Monday, the new video that Ivy Connolly and Crown Rights have put together.

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This is a collaborative effort. You all were so generous. When did we do the second video that we did?

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I remember exactly when it was, but we sort of opened up a PayPal donation link.

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And even after we reached our goal, more came in.

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And so we used that to do a third video. And I knew months ago exactly what

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I wanted to do that video on. And so I took the time to put together, again, what we've done in the past is

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I put together sort of a stream of consciousness type thing.

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I do my best to write out the primary areas of emphasis that we want to touch upon.

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And then I put this all together. I send it to Ivy. And then he, of course, turns it into, I guess it's called spoken word.

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And then he sends that to me. And what we did this time is he sent that to me.

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And I said, well, actually, we actually did some editing this time. The first two times, pretty much what he came up with, we went with.

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This time, I sort of went, well, this section here, this section, we did a little editing, a little working on it.

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And it took longer as a result. And Ivy now lives basically on the other side of the planet from the folks at Crown Rights.

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So they have to sort of get together and do a bunch of stuff at one time.

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But I knew that what I wanted to do was a video on the subject of marriage and the fact that marriage is a divine institution, that when people talk about what

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Jesus, you know, Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. Well, you know, I am so tired of hearing that it is such a fallacious, shallow demonstration that whoever is saying it doesn't take

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Jesus seriously in any way, shape or form. And I just wanted to use this young man's talents.

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And then, of course, the folks at Crown Rights, especially Marcus Pittman and others, to put something together to speak forth the truth about the fact that marriage is a divine institution, that it is the first institution established amongst men, and that to redefine it, which is exactly what's going on right now, this isn't a matter of civil rights or anything like it.

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It is a matter of redefining what marriage is, that that activity is an anti -Christian activity and it's an activity that is anti -human life.

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It really is. It is destructive of human life, destructive of human society.

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And yet we have it going on all around us. And so, it's been a number of months since I sent those initial thoughts to Ivy.

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I've watched as they've gotten together, done the shooting, and it takes it. Believe me, I do a little teeny bit of video editing once in a blue moon, and it's a very challenging activity, shall we say.

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And so, just yesterday I got to see the video, and I was able to get a good internet connection, was able to download it, then upload it up to YouTube.

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My first request, actually, for all of our listeners is pray that it stays there, because quite honestly, we already know that in Western culture, freedom of speech is under attack, and especially on this subject.

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I mean, YouTube is owned by Google. Just last week, Google launched a legalized love campaign all across the world, where they're seeking to promote the redefinition of marriage in every, quote -unquote, homophobic country.

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And so, I realize that the chances are actually rather good that someone will launch a campaign to have any type of...

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The other side in this matter just simply wants to silence everybody else. They don't believe in tolerance. They don't believe in diversity.

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They have redefined both words into their exact opposite meanings. And so, first of all, pray that the video will stay where it is, where it can be most easily accessed by the most number of people.

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Obviously, we could take it to other sources. We could take it to Vimeo. There are other places we can go.

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Worst comes to worst, my understanding is Sermon Audio even hosts some videos. And before long, that may be the only place we can go with almost anything, to be perfectly honest with you.

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But first of all, pray that the video stays there. But then secondly, we don't have a promotional department.

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We don't have a PR department. We don't have money and funds for that kind of thing in the first place.

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And so, the only way that we can get... Mutato and Channel just said,

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Google also owns the state of Oregon, which is probably true, and possibly

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New York, Massachusetts, definitely. And they're working on California, but I'm not sure if they want to buy

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California because it's so far in debt that that would be a bad thing. But anyway, it's okay.

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Studio audience may laugh. We do have a studio audience today. I'm sort of trying to turn just a little bit their direction, but I have to keep my mouth face toward the microphone or I'll disappear.

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But so, I said something funny and one person in the studio audience laughed.

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And that's a good thing for me. The thing that scares me, though, is that Barry Lattin's here.

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And if I start making people laugh, he's going to start coming in because he believes that he is the vice president in charge of comedy.

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And therefore, he will have to shut me down and start doing what he's supposed to do. See, there he's going.

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I knew as soon as I said that that would happen. Anyway, what I was trying to say is you all are our best means of getting word out about this video.

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This morning, I did let Michael Brown know about it. And obviously, Michael Brown has a very large audience of folks who likewise,

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I think, would be willing to promote this and share it with people. But especially on a subject like this,

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I mean, how many people are going to an evangelical church this coming Sunday and they have the married groups and things like that and are concerned about the redefinition of marriage and recognize that in Europe, where this has taken place years before this, it has not resulted in just simply an expansion of marriage rights to others.

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It has resulted in the destruction of marriage itself. Because once you start redefining marriage, eventually it's just simply a relationship between folks.

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It's nothing more than a country club. It's nothing more than joining.

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You know, when I was a kid, I was a member of the Estes Model Rocket Club. Woohoo. You know, I mean, that's that wasn't funny,

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Barry. I was a member of the Estes Model Rocket Club, and it's a good club to be a member of.

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I want you to understand that. But anyways, it destroys marriage.

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It turns it into something that is, well, what is, you know, it's interesting. The term koine, koine

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Greek means common. Koine means common. It makes marriage koine. It means it makes it common.

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It makes it profane, profane. You know, we talk about profanity, but really profane just simply means that which is not holy, that which is not set apart, that which is common, that which is regular.

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And that's what that's what it does to marriage. And so there would be a lot of people in those churches that would be concerned about the redefinition of marriage.

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And here is a way of communicating the important elements of this, the fact that marriage is defined by Christ.

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He is our creator. It also has a gospel presentation in it. So let people know about it.

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Post it on your Facebook pages and and retweet the tweets and all the other things that you can do to to get this kind of stuff out there.

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And that will help us tremendously to to get it there, because we like I said, we don't have the the funds and things like that to buy the type of advertising that a lot of people do.

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And so it is it is just my request that you'd be able to do that, that you'd share it with others.

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And and that's that's what helps to get out there. I think the first video we did with Ivy has had about one hundred and fifty thousand and just under one hundred and fifty thousand video views.

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We'd like to have a whole lot more than that. You know, the video that it was responding to had over a million. But we also recognize that we represent a rather minority opinion that, you know,

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I was mentioning to Barry, you know, if this is one of the times when the fact that we have not done networking and that we don't try to.

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Well, I say things that get us in trouble. OK, let me just give you one name as an example.

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Ergen Kanner. OK, since you do something like that, since you feel it's important to do things like that, then you cut yourself off from the natural networking that could otherwise be there.

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And but I think it's important. It's it's necessary to be able to say what you need to say when you need to say it.

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So help us with it and what we'd like to do. And by the way, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

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Like I said, if you'd like to comment on the video or maybe you'd like to call in and say that, you know,

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Brad Pitt's mom, I don't know if you'd like to call in. That's the number to call him.

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But I did want to play the audio for the video for you, for those some people that just don't do videos for some odd, strange reason.

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And so I've asked Rich back at the studios to have it all queued up and ready to go. So let's go ahead and and play the video, the audio of the video on the divine institution of marriage.

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What is the nature of love? The love that exists between a man and a woman is not a mirror image.

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It is the love of one who is different than I am. When we listen to Christ, his wisdom, his perfection, he predicted his own death, burial and resurrection.

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He even raised the dead, gave sight to the blind. Now, stop to him instead of talking all the time.

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After all, he's the creator of heavens in this world, created the first couple, made him boy and girl.

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I mean, man and woman, a wife or a husband. We have no right to change what he set up in.

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Jesus said, for this cause, shall a man leave his mom and dad? Yes. Cling to his wife and the two shall be one flesh.

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Marriage represents Christ in the church. See, he's the bridegroom. We're the bride. See how it works.

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And it's wonderful why he allows us to bear fruit like it's only a man and a woman that can reproduce men, protect women, nurture.

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That's factual. Same sex marriage is simply unnatural and no number of votes would ever change his mind.

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Marriage is between a man and woman. It's divine. When I see a man, I see the same exterior.

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So please answer this. How could you really love a mirror? That's selfishness, shameful us with passion.

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But when a male and a female marries, it requires selflessness. And that's a challenge. But some of you say you don't believe in Christ and you was born gay and this is your life.

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Well, I was born a criminal addicted to the world. True. The fact of the matter is, I was born like you, born a sinner, shaped in iniquity, dead in my sin to the spirit, quicken me, allow me to see that God came in the flesh, lived a perfect life and still would taste death.

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I mean, he suffered the father's wrath for all sinners that would change their mind about their sin and trust in the wages of sinners death.

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But since he's never sinned, three days later, the Christ would rise again. So calling all lesbians, calling all gays, repent from your sins.

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Today is the day. So don't harden your heart. Cry out to the Lord. May he set you apart.

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Amen. Point. And that's exactly what we needed to do.

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And so I'm very thankful that to have these opportunities, as I said, I'm still absolutely amazed.

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I don't know how this this funny looking, bald

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Scottish guy got hooked up with people like Ivy and and people like Shailene and Lecrae and others who know who

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I am and stuff. I don't even know how that stuff happens. It's just the weird world we're in where.

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Well, you know, here I am sitting in Colorado, sitting in front of a laptop, talking to people literally all over the world.

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It's just how that that type of thing happens. And so I'm very thankful for that. But again, go watch the video and let other people know about it.

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Post it on your Facebook pages. That'll help us out a lot. Just be prepared that if you dare say anything like what this video says, the people who are behind no hate don't know what the word hate means, evidently, because you will get a lot of it.

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I can guarantee you that looks like. Let me look here. No calls yet is the last that I see here.

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So that means everyone wants to have that discussion continue on. As I started last time,

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I will let Rich know I'd probably like to take a break at the half hour. So you might want to have that set up.

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I'll try to keep an eye on the on the clock here. And we'll be ready to go for that at the at the half hour.

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And if someone could tell Katie in channel that it's posted on the website, on the blog at AOMEN .org,

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you will find it. You will find it there. I'm seeing stuff flying by in the chat channel as we're speaking.

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Now, last time we were together, we began reviewing a debate that took place recently.

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I forget where it was. I think it was somewhere over in California, as I recall. It was put together very, very short notice.

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Sammy Zottery was in the country traveling on doing some speaking, doing some debates. I believe he debated Sam Shamoon as well and as well as David Wood.

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And one of the debates was put together sort of at a very short notice was the differing views of Jesus from the

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Islamic and Christian perspectives. Now, again, Sammy Zottery is one of the speakers for the Muslim Debate Initiative.

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Now, I realize that not everybody in MDI is going to walk lockstep with everybody else.

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And I mentioned last time that I'll be doing a debate in September with Abdullah Al -Andalusi on the same subject that I debated

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Bassam Zawadi on the last time I was in London. And so there are obviously differences of approach and emphasis and so on and so forth.

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I fully understand that, just as there are differences in approach and emphasis on certain subjects amongst the people who contribute to the blog at AOMN .org.

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And so you'd have some differences in our own perspectives on particular things, though certainly not on the central issues.

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And I would assume that everybody at MDI would hold to a particularly orthodox, I would assume,

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Sunni perspective. Now that I think about it, I'm sort of wondering if there isn't someone associated with MDI at some level who is

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Shiite, but I'm not certain about that. But anyway, I think there was at some point in the past. Maybe there isn't anymore.

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I don't know. Anyway, Sami Zawadi represents one of the major groups of the Muslim debate initiative.

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And since we'll be debating and the subject that Sami and I will be debating is one that I must at least thank him for being willing to do.

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I haven't found many Muslims who are willing to debate Surah 4157.

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And the Islamic denial of the crucifixion of Jesus. So it is helpful,

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I think, to have that debate coming up. I know that he also wants to debate the

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Muslim view of Jesus or the Muslim view of salvation as well. But we'll see how many we can we can cram in to a short period of time.

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And maybe one of those situations where we're doing more than one debate in one day, if we can possibly work that out.

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But anyways, as I was listening to Sami Zawadi, I was concerned and somewhat disappointed by some of the statements that were made.

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They do reflect very common Islamic viewpoints, very commonly repeated by people that you would be talking to as you speak to Muslims.

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And of course, one of the reasons I do this is so that you will be encouraged to do so. So many evangelicals just simply won't open their mouths.

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They do not want to talk to the Muslim because of fear, because of unfamiliarity. I've said many, many times

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I graduated seminary with an absolutely minimal knowledge of what

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Islam teaches. And I don't think that would be any better today for the vast majority of seminary graduates at all.

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And so it's certainly understandable why that is the case. But be it as it may,

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I jumped into the debate during the rebuttal period because, you know, opening statements tend to be somewhat general.

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You're sort of going your own direction. Once you get into the rebuttal periods, you actually have to start, hopefully, interacting with what the other side has said.

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And that gives you more of the specifics. And so I'm thinking this is pretty much where I forgot to write down the time, but I think this is within a few seconds, one way or the other, of where we stopped as we were listening to this on Wednesday when we were last together.

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So let's pick it up at that point. Now, maybe some of you will say they're not true

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Christians, et cetera. That's another topic. But now, give you the context.

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And remember what was said last time. Sam was saying there are thousands, there are millions of Christians who don't believe that Jesus Christ is

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God. And my response to that is, well, if you're going to be consistent, then as a

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Muslim, you would have to accept, as Muslims, people who don't believe that Muhammad was a prophet or don't believe that the

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Koran is the word of God. And I've never met any of these folks who would. For the Muslim side, oh, yes, there are absolute minimums.

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But since Christianity, you know, look, I have been very, very clear in my views of the

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Crusades and the activities of the Roman communion down through the centuries.

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Since Christianity, true Christianity, doesn't respond to heresy by killing the heretics.

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There are all sorts of people who have claimed to be Christians and yet have denied central aspects of the

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Christian faith. There's, of course, all sorts of folks. But that doesn't change the fact that there is a definition of what a

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Christian is. And I would never call someone, I would never hold, for example,

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I would never hold Sami Zaatari accountable for the statements of Muslims who clearly are completely ignorant of the

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Islamic faith. And yet these very same Muslims want to hold us accountable for people who deny the deity of Christ, as if that is definitional for Christianity, as if that's an argument against Christianity.

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And I just don't believe that that is a fair statement whatsoever.

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So when he says, well, that's a different subject, you might say they're not true Christians, that's different subject. No, that is the subject that is central to this.

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And a number of times, I think at least twice in this debate, he makes that statement where he he recognizes, well, you might not say they're true

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Christians, but that's another subject. And thereby, he doesn't have to actually interact with the inconsistency of his own argument, because I think

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Sami knows that from his perspective, he would draw certain lines as to what is and what isn't, who is and who is not a

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Muslim, what is and what is not Islamic theology. But when it comes to Christians, we somehow are not allowed to do that. Again, inconsistency, sign of a failed argument.

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The fact of the matter is these Christians do exist. And let's go in the time of Jesus. Let's go to his right hand man,

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Peter. Now, here we go. Here comes an attempt to to turn

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Peter into a Unitarian or into a person who does not believe in the deity of Christ.

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And what you will and this is this isn't this is important for you. I don't care if you're talking to the Jehovah's Witness.

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I don't care if you're talking to the Mormon. And obviously, they have very different views of Jesus and what deity is so on and so forth.

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The Muslim, a large number of the apologetic interactions that you're going to be having with people are going to come down to you recognizing the presuppositional errors they make in their thinking.

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And Sami Zayi has demonstrated here some very presuppositional errors in his thinking. In the form of the argumentation, he's going to use and for Muslims especially, but others will do it as well.

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They'll say, well, look, the Bible says that Jesus is the son of God, not

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God. Now, what's the presuppositional assertion there that son of God is not a title of deity, but it is especially clearly revealed in the fact when

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Jesus uses it, the Jews tend to pick up stones to stone him for saying that. So what does that mean?

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You need to flesh out what son of God means or one of them that's going to be used here is the people when

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Jesus comes into Jerusalem, he's the son of David, he's the

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Messiah, he's the prophet, as if these somehow mean he's not deity. And of course, we believe he's all of these things.

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So what they'll do is they'll take a small portion of the full representation of who

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Jesus is. And let's say, well, because he's this, then he can't be that. And you need to identify that, boy, you are really limiting what

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Jesus can be. It's ironic you don't do that with your prophet. There are a number of different words that are used, a number of different descriptions that are used of of your prophet.

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And yet you don't say, well, because he was this, then he can't be that.

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But you're doing that to me. You're saying that because Jesus is called the son of God, that he can't be truly deity or if he's called

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Messiah, that means automatically that he's only a man or these other types of things. And so listen to the argumentation.

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Now, remember, this is Peter. And Peter in Matthew, chapter 16, when

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Jesus says, you know, this is who do men say, but who do you say you are, the

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Messiah, the Christos in Greek, the son of the blessed one.

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OK, so he identifies him as the son and this same

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Peter. And of course, you just need to be aware of the fact if you're going to quote from first to second Peter, just be aware

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Muslims know liberals and they know liberal writings. And that's why we need to know the liberal writings and know how to respond to them.

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Oh, well, Peter didn't write them and they'll start chopping up the Bible. Now, they very, very rarely go into any level of depth, because if they really did, they'd realize how inconsistent they're being, because if you start listening to the actual arguments, go, wow, if I applied that to the

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Koran, I wouldn't believe in most of the Koran. So they don't really go into depth. But just just remember, this is the same

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Peter who in second Peter, chapter one, identifies Jesus as our God and savior. Now, he won't talk about that, won't discuss that.

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Listen to the argumentation about Peter. What did Peter say about Jesus when Jesus asked him?

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Jesus said, who do you say I am? Who do you think I am, Peter? And in Mark, chapter eight, verses twenty nine to thirty.

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What does Peter say? He says, you are the Christ, the Messiah. He didn't say you are

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God, you are part of the trinity or the divine son of God, etc. etc.

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That's his right hand man. So what is that? What is the assumption that is that is being that is being put there?

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That every time anyone says anything to Jesus, any reference to Jesus, whether it's from Peter at Caesarea Philippi or the crowds as as Jesus is coming into Jerusalem.

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When they address Jesus, they have to say everything about Jesus. So they have to identify him as Messiah and they have to identify him as the son of God, the son of man, the prophet and and as deity, as the second person in the trinity.

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And and, you know, every time that any apostle, any time that a disciple walks up to Jesus, he's going to have to he can't say

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Jesus. He's going to have to provide a paragraph long description or that means

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Jesus isn't God. Now, obviously, that is a completely bogus assumption.

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It is it is absurd. And you think of all the words that are used of we'll think of let's let's

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I like drawing parallels. That would be as absurd as saying that every time the Quran addresses something to Allah or says something about Allah, that all 99 names need to be attached.

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Or that means that Allah isn't one of those things. So, for example, one of the 99 names is

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Al -Haqq, the truth. All right. Well, there are times when Allah is not not addressed as Al -Haqq, the truth.

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So therefore, he's not the truth. Right now, it's absurd. And yet that's the exact argumentation that is being used here to try to tell us that in reality,

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Jesus is not God, because in Mark's version, he says you are the

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Christ. But in Matthew's version, you are the Christ, the son of the living one. That's an important again.

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You've got to identify what the underlying presuppositions in the argumentation really is.

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What about the crowd when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the prophecy of the

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Messiah coming to Jerusalem? How did the crowd welcome Jesus when he came on the donkey?

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Did they say, oh, now, let me let me stop. I'll let him finish. But what would you expect the crowd to say?

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I mean, honestly, do you really expect them to even understand that it's been clearly stated in the

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Gospels they don't even understand what the Messiah's actual role is. And so would you expect them to understand

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Jesus's use of the son of man from Daniel seven or what the son of David means or son of God?

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Honestly, the crowd now becomes the standard. That's pretty amazing.

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I'll need to pick up with what the rest of his comment is, but we're going to take a brief break and maybe we'll hear some of their new commercials that he's been working so hard at.

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In fact, do a voiceover while while they're happening. I don't know. But let's take a break and we'll we'll be right back.

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Hello, everyone. This is Rich Pierce in a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man centered self -help program.

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The need for a no nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater. I am convinced that a great many go to church every

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Sunday, yet they have never been confronted with their sin. Alpha Omega Ministries is dedicated to presenting the gospel in a clear and concise manner, making no excuses.

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Man is sinful and God is holy. That sinful man is in need of a perfect savior.

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And Jesus Christ is that perfect savior. We are to come before the holy God with an empty hand of faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Alpha and Omega takes that message to every group that we deal with while equipping the body of Christ as well.

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Support Alpha and Omega Ministries and help us to reach even more with the pure message of God's glorious grace.

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Thank you. Breaking news from the

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White House and the issue gay marriage. For a lot of people, you know, the word marriage was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs.

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I think same sex couples should be able to get married. The NAACP has passed a resolution endorsing gay marriage as a civil right.

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This comes two weeks after the president announced his support for same sex marriage. Under the guise of tolerance, our culture today grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

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Anyone opposing or questioning this today is quickly shouted down, called a bigot, a homophobe, a hate monger, threatened and accused of discrimination.

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It's become commonplace to see people who take a biblical stand against homosexuality ostracized to the point of losing their job.

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How soon will it be before we will also see people losing their freedom? Now more than ever, Christians need to be equipped to be an approved workman of God, correctly dividing the word of truth.

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As we are told in 2 Timothy 2 15, Dr. James White and Pastor Jeffrey Neal have partnered to bring you their book,

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The Same Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy today from the bookstore at AOMN .org.

32:49

And don't forget to search for other resources like debates and past dividing lines dealing with this very provocative issue.

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And remember, theology matters. I'm not sure if they could listen to the first part of the program because they are

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Canadian. And I'm not sure the Canadian censors will allow the first part of the program into Canadia.

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And I only slightly joke at that point, unfortunately, because that's certainly what is coming.

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And anyway, so we are listening to a debate that took place just a few weeks ago in California.

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And we're listening to Sammy Zottery. We sort of interrupted him in the middle of arguing that the crowd did not believe in the deity of Christ.

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Well, actually, we would say, yeah, that's probably the case. We would recognize that.

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And in fact, even Thomas, it took the post -resurrection appearance of Jesus for him to fully begin to understand this.

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And interestingly enough, one of the things that's going to come up here that I do want you to be listening for before it comes along.

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One of Sammy's arguments is, why did it take the apostles so long to understand?

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If these Old Testament prophecies were there, why didn't everybody, including all the Jews, just go, oh,

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Messiah right there? And, you know, I thought David came up with some good answers, but the best answer

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David did not come up with. And I don't think David's going to be upset with me for pointing this out. I think once he sees it, he would go, oh, of course, that's exactly what

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I should have said. But the answer to the objection that's going to come up here in a second is twofold.

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First of all, the presentation of the work and the ministry of the Messiah in the

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Old Testament is encompassing both his first advent as well as his second coming as well.

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And so those were mixed together in their minds. It was very, very difficult. I mean, think of Peter in that very same section in Matthew chapter 16.

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What does he do when Jesus starts talking about his death, burial and resurrection, the suffering of the servant? Oh, no, far be it from you,

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Lord. And the other situation where when Jesus says he's going away, the crowd says, we've heard the

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Messiah will always will always live. The Messiah is not going to die. And so they had taken part of the prophetic picture of the

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Messiah and then had missed the suffering element to see how the two are related to one another.

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That's the first part of the answer. But the second part, the second part goes to Luke chapter 24.

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This is where I would have gone immediately in my first response to Sammy raising this issue.

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And that is Luke chapter 24. After Jesus, you've got you've got the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus.

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Jesus comes and he comes into the to the room and he meets with the disciples.

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And then what does he do? He had already upbraided the two disciples on the road to Emmaus for being slow of heart and slow to believe what the scriptures had testified concerning the

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Messiah. And when he meets with the disciples then and appears to them, what's the same thing that he does?

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He explains to them from Moses through all the prophets their testimony of him.

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And what does Luke 24, 45 say? Luke 24, 45 says he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

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There is a spiritual element to being able to understand the testimony of the scriptures.

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The scriptures, though they are written in the language of men, are not limited in their content and in their truthfulness only to what any old man can understand.

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There is a spiritual element. See that the balance that many people miss, even people who call themselves

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Christians, is you have the people who have only the spiritual side. You know, the people who flip their Bibles open and,

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I wonder if I should buy a new car. You flip the Bible open and stick your finger down and, Oh, it's something about a chariot.

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That must mean I could, you know. And it's all spiritual and they don't care about context.

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And they, you know, you start talking about New Testament backgrounds and what the Romans were like or what things were like in Israel.

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And they sort of look at you like, are you serious? This, you know, I didn't come to Bible study for this.

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I want to hear the spiritual stuff. I want to have the good stuff, you know. So they're all on the spiritual stuff and the ooey -gooey emotional spiritual side.

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And then you have the people that just, well, you know, this is what the Romans were up to. And all you have is just the grammar and the syntax and there's no overarching spiritual theme or anything else to it.

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And the truth is, of course, in the middle. It encompasses both of those perspectives and recognizes it's absolutely vital to know what the background was, the context was, the language, all the rest of that stuff.

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But there is a spiritual element. Jesus had to open the minds, even of these believing disciples, to be able to understand the scriptures.

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And that is absolutely vital to understand. And that is the fundamental response to the objection that Sammy's artery raises and I think would be a complete refutation.

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But it comes up a number of times, as we will see. Lord and Savior, God, we've been waiting for you.

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You were prophesied in the Old Testament. Finally, God in the flesh is here with us. No, they said, the son of David, the king we have been waiting for is here.

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And they didn't mean God, the king, the Messiah, the prophet. What about this? OK, I just I just stopped there and say that's not an argument.

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Unless, again, you're going to substantiate the assertion that every single time

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Jesus is addressed by anybody, no matter what their level. I mean, these are the same people who in a few days are going to be crying out, crucify him.

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You expect them to have a spiritual insight into the true nature of the Messiah? I find that an absolutely absurd argument to try to make.

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And so unless you're going to substantiate that every time someone addresses Jesus, they have to do so with a three paragraph long description of the entire biblical revelation of who he is, then it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to make this kind of argument.

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Three wise men who came to Jesus when he was born. So the three wise men, what do they have?

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I mean, seriously, they don't even have the ministry of Jesus. They don't have any self revelation from Jesus.

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They have only we don't even know what they have. Did they have the Old Testament scriptures? It would seem they had at least something.

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A star. They did. Thank you, Barry, for that. They had a star, but they obviously had something more than that to know that there was a

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Messiah. But they did not have the New Testament revelation. You really expect them to be coming to the child

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Jesus and going, oh, great second person of the Trinity. I mean, seriously, is this meaningful argumentation?

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No, it is not meaningful argumentation. Matthew chapter two, verses one to two.

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When those three wise men came to meet Jesus when he was a little baby, they say, where is God? We're here to worship

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God. We're here to see the man who created us. Now, let me obviously at this point, what

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I would want to maybe someday ask Mr. Zaatari or some of some of the others from the

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Muslim debate initiative. Is what do you do with Isaiah nine six?

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I would love to ask Mr. Zaatari, does he agree with Jamal Badawi? Jamal Badawi, who

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I would love to debate, but I guess he doesn't do debates anymore. He's still around. Uh, he debated only a couple of years ago at Biola against William Lane Craig, but I would love to debate

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Jamal Badawi because I've played on this program, but I realized over the course now of, uh, coming up on goodness, really coming up on seven years now that we've been dealing with Islam.

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So sometime over the past seven years, uh, I played is he did a whole series of half -hour television programs and in about four or five of them, he did, uh,

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Old Testament prophecies of Muhammad. And it's an excellent example that, you know, there are some

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Islamic apologists who are a little more hesitant in how they present the

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Muhammad in the Bible stuff, but others, anything that has to do with Arabia, anything that has to, that can be stretched to its uttermost, uh, end out of context, uh, will be applied to Muhammad.

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And this certainly Jamal Badawi did. And I'd be interested if Sami Zaatari would agree with Jamal Badawi's application of Isaiah 9 -6 to Muhammad.

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Isaiah 9 -6. Yeah. Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called

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Wonderful Counselor. El Gabor, Mighty God, Aviyad, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

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Now, interestingly, when he commented on that, he skipped over Mighty God. It's like it just disappeared because you couldn't apply that to Muhammad, but everything else in the description he applied to Muhammad.

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And so I would be interested, uh, not only would he agree with Jamal Badawi, but what do you do with the prophetic testimony to the fact that this one who is to come is called

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El Gabor? What does it mean to be Aviyad, Everlasting Father? A lot of, a lot of Christians even struggle with that.

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It sounds like he's saying he's a father and that's not what the trinity says. No, father in the Old Testament is used synonymously with creator.

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Uh, Israel refers to God as the father, the one who made us, the one who created us.

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And Colossians chapter one is a perfect fulfillment of eternal father, the one who created all things, the one who created time itself.

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Colossians chapter one, Jesus Christ, the creator of all things. We're in heaven and earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him before him.

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He's before all things in him, all things exist, they hold together. Perfect fulfillment of that, of that text certainly cannot be fulfilled in any way, shape, or form of Muhammad.

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But, but would you expect the crowd to have that knowledge in light of Luke 24 that says that it takes a work of the spirit of God to open the understanding, especially since this is the same crowd that in a very short period of hours is going to be saying, crucify him, crucify him.

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Again, if we know the word that we can see when someone is badly mishandling the word as Mr.

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Zaatari is here. They didn't, they said, where's the one who's the king of the Jews? Even in the gospel of John, when in John chapter six, verses 10 to 14, when

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Jesus fed thousands of people, after he fed those thousands of people, that the people all bow and say, wow, this is

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God right here. Only God can do that. Instead, this is what they said. This is the truth.

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This is the prophet that we've been waiting to come into the world. So you have individuals who in the same chapter of the gospel of John, this is, this is again, all due respect to Mr.

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Zaatari. I don't get the feeling that almost any of the Muslim apologists seriously engage in study of the biblical text in context.

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I just don't get that feeling. None of them that I have met so far. They will read secondary sources.

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They will read liberals. They will quote one another. But it's embarrassing, to be honest with you, for someone to quote this crowd.

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Oh, we see the miracle. That must mean you're God. What happened in the rest of John chapter six?

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I mean, John chapter six is clearly a literary whole. It has its own form and introduction and the whole nine yards.

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I mean, it's the longest chapter in the gospel of John, but it can stand alone in the sense of it has a particular message.

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What happens in John chapter six? They want to make him king. Jesus sends them away.

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The disciples are confused by this. I mean, the site was like, oh, this is good. This is this is what we want. 5 ,000 people.

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Wow. Jesus just demonstrated. We don't need to have supply lines. We could march on Jerusalem today and army. It doesn't need to have supply lines.

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This is pretty cool. And he sends the disciples away in the boat. Remember? And Jesus goes off in the mountain alone to pray.

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But then the next day, some of these, not all of them, but some of these do follow after Jesus.

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And they take boats and they row over to Capernaum. They come into the synagogue. They find Jesus in the synagogue. And what does

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Jesus say to these men? It's John 635. You're looking for it.

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He says to them, you have seen me, but you are not believing.

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He identifies these people as unbelievers. And so here you have

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Sami Zatri of the Muslim Debate Initiative telling us that men who are identified in the same chapter.

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This isn't somewhere else in the book. It's in the same chapter that men who are identified as unbelievers who are going to turn around and walk away from Jesus.

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By the end of John chapter 6, we should expect them to have a full -orbed understanding of who

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Jesus is. And to once again, give us a three -paragraph long description of the deity of Christ as they talk about Jesus.

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And again, I just can't begin to understand the kind of thinking that goes into this.

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Except for the fact that in my experience, and please do not take offense at this if you're from MDI and you're listening to this, but it is my experience in talking to many, especially younger

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Muslims, but it's really a pan -Islamic mindset. We Christians are proffers, non -believers.

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Our scriptures have been superseded by the Quran. So there really isn't any reason to really go in depth and to spend the time that it really takes to really know what the

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Bible actually is saying so that you don't make mistakes like this. There really isn't any need to.

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That really seems to be the attitude that many, many Muslims have. And it provides a pretty stark contrast,

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I think, for those of us who spend time trying to accurately handle the text of the

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Quran, which is very difficult to do in light of the fact that, especially in some of the longer surahs, you do not have a running context.

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And it's very difficult to know what section comes in what time in Muhammad's life and things like that. But we attempt, anyways, as best we can, to handle the text of the

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Quran with a level of accuracy that, quite honestly, just isn't something that I see from a lot of people on the other side.

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And I can bring you so many other references in the Gospels where people did not believe that Jesus was

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God. In fact, you can even go read the book of James in your Bible. And many of the followers of James christened the

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Jewish church, as they called it, the Church of Jerusalem, which was far more prominent before the

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Church of Paul. And none of them believed that Jesus was God. Now, I don't have any idea, outside of Sammy's just reading leftist liberals someplace, where to even begin in responding to something like that.

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While the book of James is not focused upon a discussion of the person of who Jesus Christ is,

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I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that James denied the deity of Christ. Again, here you have someone, you have one book from James, one book.

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And it's on one particular subject. You will hear this all the time.

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Why didn't John say this? Why didn't Matthew say this? Why didn't Paul ever mention these things about Jesus's life?

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As if each one of these individuals or their books is meant to exist in a vacuum outside of the preaching and teaching of the early church.

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But they were never meant to exist that way. Not in the sense that, oh, they were all sitting there and as Paul was like, someday this is going to be the 17th book of the

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New Testament. I just know that God's giving me that vision right now. No, I don't think there's any reason to believe that.

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But everything that they wrote was a part of the entire preaching of the church. That's why

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Paul doesn't have to repeat everything that Jesus said or did. There are people who say, oh, Paul didn't know anything about the virgin birth, or Paul didn't know anything.

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Well, aside from the fact that there's really no reason to believe that, there are some vague references. But why would he have to repeat things that are already a part of what is being preached in the church and already a part of what is being preached by the apostles, the living eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus's life?

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Paul is a convert to Christianity. He's already heard all these things. That's already the common possession of everyone to whom he's speaking.

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So why would he have to repeat it? And yet I have heard people with enough letters after their names to form their own thermometer stand in front.

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Thank you very much. Stand in front. I love having live studio audience. It's sort of good. Stand in front of audiences and with chests puffed out, actually stand there and say, well, we know the apostle

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Paul didn't know this and didn't know that. And I just it's hard for me not to laugh when

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I hear that kind of stuff, because it is just so ridiculous. But as long as somebody's got their degree from someplace, they must know what they're talking about.

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Well, not necessarily. And you can read the book of James for yourself, the brother of Jesus.

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So you have all of these first century followers and even in the gospels who did not believe that Jesus was

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God. Now, have we actually been given any meaningful argumentation in the past?

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And of course, I've been talking most of this time, but let's say the past 60 seconds of Sammy's statements. No, no.

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If you really want to deal with Peter, then you're going to have to deal with second Peter one, one deal with the Granville Sharp construction and second

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Peter one, one. If you're going to say Peter didn't write second Peter, then you've got to get into the authorial issues.

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And what about the clear testimonies to the deity of Christ that are part of each one of the books that were cited?

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So he cites from Mark. OK, let's deal with what Jesus says when he's before the high priest in Mark chapter 14, when he quotes from Daniel chapter seven, a clear vision of the son of man as a divine being who has followers who worship him, give him a true.

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That's applied. Jesus applies to himself and the high priest tears his robes and says, what further need do

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I have of testimony? You've heard the blasphemy yourself. You've got to allow Mark to say that every time you say, well,

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Mark has this low Christology. You've got to deal with all of Mark. All they want to do is be able to chop it up in a little teeny tiny pieces and say, well, this chapter doesn't seem to be that way.

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Would Sami Zaatari allow me to do that with the Koran? Of course not. Inconsistency.

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That's what you have to be able to identify over and over again in argumentations against the

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Christian faith. And again, this is an undisputed fact. It wasn't until the third century that Jesus was officially declared as God.

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Now, again, this is an undisputed fact. No, it's not an undisputed fact.

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It all requires us to understand what do you mean declared officially? Well, by a church council.

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Well, but there were church councils before the Council of Nicaea that specifically dealt with these issues that denied civilianism and things like that.

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Oh, well, okay. By an ecumenical council. Well, ecumenical council, no one at the Council of Nicaea. If you had said, hey, isn't it great, everybody?

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We're at the first ecumenical council. They all would have stared at you like, say what? The first two?

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The first what? They had no idea what you were talking about. That is a later understanding. And the very fact that the

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Council of Nicaea had to fight for its acceptance. And for 50 years, the Arians were in charge after that almost, demonstrates very, very clearly that these later concepts just didn't have any meaning at that time.

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So to say it's an undisputed fact is to read so much stuff in and to not really deal fairly with all the texts that we've cited so many times from Ignatius and others demonstrating they believe in the deity of Christ long before the

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Council of Nicaea. Orthodoxy, not even the Trinity by then. So that's obviously a big problem if it took you 300 years to finally decide that.

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Now to catch that, if it took you 300 years to finally decide that, what's being presented there?

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It's the same thing that Bart Ehrman does. It's the, oh, there was such a wide diversity of perspectives and you had proto -Orthodoxy and this type of thing.

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And again, what's the name of the book?

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It's just slipped my mind, unfortunately, right here toward the end of the program, but I've recommended it a number of times before.

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Something, the Heresy of Orthodoxy. Heresy of Orthodoxy. It's not easy reading, okay?

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It's not necessarily fun reading, but I highly recommend to anyone who really wants to be able to give a meaningful response to the erminized zombies of the world, okay?

55:26

The people who have just taken whatever Bart Ehrman says, and oh, Bart Ehrman says it, and he's the greatest, and therefore, read the

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Heresy of Orthodoxy so that you can give a response to those who make that kind of a statement.

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The Heresy of Orthodoxy is in the AOMN store, aomn .org. I really highly recommend that you get it.

55:47

It'll be very, very useful to you. It really, really will. Looking at my, let's see here, we've got just a couple minutes left here on the program.

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Let's get a little bit more of the discussion in. There's obviously more to it, and it's not as simple as David is trying to make it out to be.

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Now, what about Jesus saying, I am, and all things with the Father belong to me, and I have the glory of the

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Father. Now, this is something very interesting. Why is it that all of these sayings are only in the

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Gospel of John and not in the other three Gospels? We'll pick it up right there.

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Part of what he just said wasn't in John. It was from Matthew, and he's not aware of that.

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It seems to me that since Abdullah Kunda uses the exact same argument, and this is exactly what we're about to get to in our review of his debate with Samuel Green, and we've already started to respond to some of this, that this is sort of one of the

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MDI talking point issues. That this is, all right, this is what we're going to say.

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This is how we're going to put it. We're going to say, but you won't hear it.

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Okay, reading. I am such a good professional that I can read notes to myself without being interrupted.

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No, actually, I can't. Yes, I know that the music will come up underneath me, and that's cool.

57:14

I'll keep an eye on the clock here. I've got about one minute before I need to stop yapping. But anyways, it seems to be something that MDI is saying, okay, guys, this is something we found that Christians struggle to respond to, and so let's use it.

57:29

And yeah, I guess that I have an advantage at this point, and that is I'm coming up on like 10 years in the adult

57:38

Sunday school class at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church of teaching through the Synoptic Gospels, but we've put John in along with it.

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So like right now, we're doing John chapter 12 in Sunday school, and we'll be working all the way through John chapter 17 and then fitting that in with synoptics and so on and so forth.

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So I've got a little bit of an advantage there, but it seems to be sort of one of the talking points. And maybe

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I'll sort of just briefly respond to this next time and really get into Abdullah Kunduz's presentation of it, one of those two.

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But I really want to help our listeners understand how to explain how the gospel writers had different emphases, different audiences and things like that as a means of responding to this particular objection.

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Thanks a lot for listening to Dividing Line today. Lord willing, I'll be back in one piece in Phoenix next week for our regularly scheduled

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Tuesday morning edition of the program. And if not, guess what? We'll try to tell you ahead of time.

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But thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. God bless. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for.

58:45

We need a new reformation day. It's a sadder than times.

58:52

The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm. Don't you lift up your voice.

58:59

Are you tired of plain religion? It's time to make some noise. I stand up for the truth and won't you live for the

59:13

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