40 years of God's Provision and Grace

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:28

We're coming to you live from the G3 National Conference. We are back in the,

00:34

I don't know what the name of this place is, but the regular convention center. For at least one time, we were somewhere else.

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And how many have been in this one before and were also in the other one?

00:48

How many of you have? OK, so how many of you like this one better than the other one? How many of you like the other one better than this one?

00:56

Anybody who has their hand up right now is a weirdo. OK, so just notice them. You must have had yours up,

01:02

Chris. We have the living laugh track with us today,

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Chris Arnzen on the front row. There have been times I've sent Chris Arnzen funny things on Facebook Messenger.

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He lives in Pennsylvania. I live in Arizona. And I heard him laughing all the way across the nation.

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It is the most distinctive laugh ever recorded in all of human history.

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I'm going to try to put something up on the screen here, because those of you who listen to The Vying Line know

01:32

I get easily distracted by things. And this just popped up.

01:39

This popped up from yesterday. How many of you were here for the panel discussion yesterday? OK, somebody, and I'm not sure if this is accurate or not, but I'm not disputing it.

01:50

All right. Somebody decided to time the one hour talk and came up with the time of possession, which would be time of yapping, time of talking, time of opening one's mouth.

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And there were one, two, three, four, there were at least five other guys up there on the stage.

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And out of one hour, I got 38 minutes and two seconds. And everybody else combined got 21 minutes and 58 seconds.

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That's how you win a Super Bowl, OK? It's time of possession. You control the ball, and you win the debate, you win the game.

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That's just how it is. And look, how many times have you been to G3? And we're going to have a panel tomorrow afternoon.

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I'm supposed to be on a panel. I think it's 3 o 'clock, something like that. And someone will ask a question, and just watch the heads.

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They all turn to me. I don't know why. Maybe it was, if you were there yesterday, you know that at one point

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I asked, so how many other grandparents, grandfathers are there on the panel? And they all just sat there looking at me, because I'm the only grandfather on the panel.

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So it could just be respect for elders that's taking place there, I don't know. But yeah, it can sometimes get me into trouble.

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And do you all see what's on my leg there? If you haven't had a chance yet, and I did not have time to go by and look.

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And I did not have time to grab mine. I had to run all the way back to the hotel to get this computer and bring it back again.

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I'm pretty much exhausted, so forgive me for that. But that is my new 11th or 12th

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Jeffrey Rice Rebind, I think. Since he did my Nessie Olin 28th edition

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Greek New Testament years ago. But post -Tenebrous for Lux Bible rebinding, over in amongst the displays there, he has come up with what he calls the

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Johnny Cash. And if you look, you see it's a black cover. It has black page edges, black ribbons, and black imprinting.

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So it's imprinted with the five solas and stuff like that on it, but it's in black.

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So it's all black. And as you know, Johnny Cash was the man in black. I did notice, it is interesting, that is a

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Legacy Standard Bible giant print. They had just come out with it. And I'm very thankful they came out with it, because I was really getting to the point where I was just going to have to start doing the old man glasses stuff to be able to read anything.

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But I can read this. It just seems to me that, and I can see how this would work.

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Think about if you open your Bible, right? If you have a, OK, there's a couple of Bibles right down the front here.

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The edges of the pages produce some light reflection. If you make them black, it focuses your attention on the white.

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It really seems to me like the text pops better when you have black page edges with the black on the outside.

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It's just easier for me to read. So they're beautiful. Just walk by and check them out.

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He's doing a great job. And I had mine with me up there. And I hope everybody found it to be an interesting conversation and everything else.

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But anyway, so you can do whatever you'd like,

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Rich. I think, personally, Rich has gotten a little bit. He's given me all this power.

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I'm normally running the ATEM. He can't pop in and talk when

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I'm doing it on the road. I can talk about him. He can't talk about me. And so I think a little bit of that power that he's always had by sitting behind the controls has been lost.

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And so I think he's enjoying doing the game over here with the camera and seeing all of you.

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And you all get to go back and look at this dividing line and go, hey, look, there I am. And your grandchildren will be amazed and stuff like that.

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Well, not really, actually. But anyways, so now I get to watch him try to get it back in there without it falling over and shattering into 1 ,000 pieces on the ground.

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We spent the entire morning meeting and greeting folks. It has been always exciting to hear people talking about what the ministry has meant to them and the assistance in reaching out to others and things like that.

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It's one of the main reasons I like to come to G3. I mean, I'm trying to remember when

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I first started coming. I think it was 2015. I'm not 100 % certain. But it was fairly early on in the history of G3.

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And I've addressed a lot of interesting topics in the plenary sessions. But now that it's become this big, this huge, having the opportunity of meeting with people and hearing their stories, yeah, taking 47 ,000 selfies, which

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I've never understood why anyone wants a picture of me anyways. But doing that, signing books, doing all that other stuff, but getting to hear how the

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Lord has used a ministry that started 40 years ago at the end of this month.

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And in fact, we're going to have a little celebration. I want to get back to Phoenix, right there at the beginning of October, marking 40 years for Alpha Omega Ministries.

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It's funny, we didn't do anything for 30. I tried to sort of do something. But I don't know, 30 just doesn't seem all that big.

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40 years is wandering in the wilderness. Who knows, it's a nice biblical number or something like that.

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I honestly don't know of many apologetics ministries that have ever made it to 40 years.

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And so we just may be very dogged, or did something right along the ways,

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I'm not sure. But 40 years ago, two young married couples got together and went to, well, at the time, my wife, who's sitting over at the

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Alpha Omega Ministries, there, she's waving over there, there's Kelly. Kelly's at her first G3, so if you haven't had a chance to greet her, we've been married for 41 years.

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And so she does get the Jobe Award for patience. And so you all, there you go, there you go.

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She's clapping for herself, OK. Always interesting when cameras are around.

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But anyway, we gathered in our, well, actually at the time, we were living in my parents' garage, in a little apartment in my parents' garage after we got married.

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I was 19, she was 18, and I had started teaching a, we were 19, 18, we got married anyways.

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I started teaching a class on Mormonism at a very large Southern Baptist church. And it was

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Kelly and I, and a couple named Mike and Linda Bellowo. And Kelly was working for,

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I don't even know how you'd describe it. They did real estate and all sorts of other things, but they had an attorney that worked with them.

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And so we had the attorney draw up the articles of incorporation. And when we incorporated 40 years ago, we had one really bad tract.

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I had written it. I'll take the responsibility for it being a really bad tract, but it was a really bad tract. It was photocopied, so it wasn't even printed.

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And about the only other thing we had was a copy of the Journal of Discourses, which is a multi -volume record of the early sermons of the

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Mormon church. And that's how Alpha Omega Ministries started. And at the time, we were perfectly content to witness to Mormons.

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There were lots of Mormons in Arizona at that time. Places like Mesa, Arizona were almost completely

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Mormon. We figured that would be more than enough to keep us busy. It didn't take long for people to start asking questions about Jehovah's Witnesses.

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They figure if you're talking to one group at the door, maybe you're talking to another group at the door, too. And I did obtain a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses books and things like that, did a lot of reading to get up to speed on them.

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And then a gentleman who worked with us, who has since gone to be with the Lord, as a former

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Roman Catholic, said, well, you know, you need to be talking about these issues. Because look at what Rome says about justification.

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And look at what the Mormons say about justification. And look at their view of scripture and things like that.

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And that eventually led to interactions before the internet on something called a

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BBS. How many ever used a Fidonet BBS? Anyone putting that hand up is admitting to being very old and decrepit and aged.

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And nerdy, yes. So Eric Nielsen right down here, a longtime nerdy old

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BBSer. Knew him in our, we started in 1996, we started a chat channel, an

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IRC chat channel called Prasapaligiam. And that lasted until 2016,

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I believe. And so we've always been rather nerdy ourselves, as far as that goes.

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But the BBSes were even before that. And I started engaging people, Mormons and Roman Catholics and others in that mechanism.

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And so when I wrote my first book, it surprised everybody that the first book was on Roman Catholicism and not on Mormonism.

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The third book was Letters to a Mormon Elder. And once we published, it was actually two books, because it got too big to be one book.

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We split it in half. First was called, in fact, somebody had one. Colin, Colin, do you have it?

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This is Silly Brit over here in the orange shirt. Silly Brit is from England.

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He could never find England again if his life depended on it, however, because Colin is directionally challenged.

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In fact, I'm glad you were able to get up here. This is how nice I am to my friends.

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That's how I am to my enemies. No, no, Silly Brit has been a great friend. In fact, I was his mentor in seminary, and he was a very good student, so there you go.

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There you go. But here is my first book. He brought it to have me sign it today.

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It's called The Fatal Flaw, and do the teachings of Roman Catholicism deny the gospel?

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And it had been thicker. We broke the second half off and made another book called Answers to Catholic Claims, because it was the appendices that dealt with solo scriptura and topics like that.

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So there's, people, well, I can give it to him. Thank you, sir.

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People wonder, well, people wonder what it's like when you get your first box of your first book.

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And so when I opened the first box of my first book, that is what I saw, was that very book right there,

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The Fatal Flaw, and Answers to Catholic Claims. Well, what we did is we sent copies of those books to Catholic Answers.

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Now, Catholic Answers has been around for a while, and they used to publish a magazine called

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This Rock Magazine. And I had heard a number of their debates, and I knew that they had a fellow by the name of Jerry Matitix.

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Now, how many of you know who R .C. Sproul's mentor was? All right, a few people do.

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His name was John Gerstner. And John Gerstner's favorite student was

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Jerry Matitix. And Jerry Matitix was the first ordained

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PCA minister to become a Roman Catholic. So he, and a very well -known

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Roman Catholic today, by the name of Scott Hahn, converted

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Roman Catholicism pretty much together. And so we sent that book, and Answers to Catholic Claims, to Catholic Answers, and very quickly thereafter, we got a phone call from Jerry Matitix in the offices of Catholic Answers challenging me to debate.

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Now, I had heard a lot of their debates, and I knew that Jerry was one of the only people that could ever out -talk me.

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And I had heard them debating, especially Calvary Chapel pastors, who in general had no church history understanding at all and could not engage

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Roman Catholicism on church history whatsoever. And so we accepted the challenge, and it was set up at St.

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Cyprian's? I think it was St. Cyprian's Catholic Church in Long Beach, California.

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And it took place, I believe, August 16th, 1990. How many of you had not yet taken your first breath on August 16th, 1990?

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Okay, all right, that's a big group. We drove over,

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I'll never forget, I've told this story many times, but Kelly's probably never heard me tell it. We went into what would be the fellowship center or activity center or something, and Catholic Answers had like five or six, six -foot -long tables with nice banners behind them, you know, a lot of like what you're seeing around here, with all their books laid out and all their charts, and their tracks, and their tapes.

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There were no, I don't think, did we have CDs in 1990? I don't think we had

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CDs in 1990. So it was cassette tapes. And they're,

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I mean, they're looking professional. And there's two six -foot bare tables on the other side of the room.

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And we go walking in there, and we had like one box each of The Fatal Flaw and Answers to Catholic Claims.

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I don't think we had any tracks. I think we had actually gotten a cash box.

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And I will never forget walking out of that room, and there is my little wife, all alone, standing behind that one little table with our two little piles of books.

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And that's all we had, that was it. And we debated solo scriptura that night.

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That was my first debate. I had never taken debate. Debate had not been offered in my high school, in college.

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I grew up as a radio announcer. That's why these things don't bother me at all. Some people freak out, and I'm just like, whatever.

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It was a good debate, but there was much I had to learn. For example, when we got to the cross -examination period,

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I really didn't have anything prepared, and I had never done anything like this before. So I had to grow,

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I had to learn, but I think Jerry was surprised by one thing. And this is just simply the way

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God designed me. But the more agitated he became, the calmer

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I became. And if any of you have watched any of the 181 debates that have followed that one, you've seen that happen more than once, where my opponent starts getting agitated, and I just become more focused.

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And I just remember that night thinking, well, look, if you're gonna wanna start making a fool of yourself, let me give you all the rope you want.

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Why should I get in the way? It's just sort of the way that I was designed,

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I guess. And I didn't know that there'd be any debates after that, but believe you me, I had no, if somebody had come up to me that night after that debate, and thankfully some church members from Phoenix Reform Baptist Church drove over to be there.

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There were a few, we had a few people anyways that were on our side. But if someone had come up to me that night, and they had said that in less than 40 years, literally in less than 30 years,

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I would be standing in front of the Qibla. Now, I didn't know what a

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Qibla was back then. How many of you know what a Qibla is? One, two, three.

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The Qibla is the part of the mosque that points toward really the

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Black Stone specifically, but the Grand Mosque in Mecca. And so it's where the imam stands, and they all face the

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Qibla, so they're facing the Black Stone for their prayers, for the prayers in the mosque.

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And so if someone had told me that 30 years later, because it was October of 2013, that I stood in front of the

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Qibla in the Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa, debating

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Shabir Ali in front of a group of Muslims, explaining to them how they can have peace with God through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, if someone had told me that that night,

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I couldn't have handled that. I remember early on in my years at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, one of the long -term families in the church their son had a brain tumor.

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And when we visited in the hospital, the father said something

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I've always remembered. He said, God promises us sufficient grace only when we need it, not before we need it.

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And I really think that's something I've certainly learned from thinking about 40 years of apologetic ministry.

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Is that we don't need to know the future. We don't need to know what's coming. We need to plan on the basis of what

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God has revealed, the wisdom he's given us in the gifts that he's given to us.

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And then we can trust him for everything else. And we don't need to know what's coming down the road.

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It's exciting to look back now upon those things, but my goodness, when I think of what had to be done just in my growth as a debater, a researcher, a reader, a scholar, all these things, it would have been too daunting to have even given a consideration.

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It really would have been. And so I'm thankful for that. I think most of you in here who can give a testimony of what

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God's done in your life, you know exactly what it is that I'm talking about. And so that was in August.

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And then in December, Jerry Matitix and Scott Hahn flew into Phoenix to do two debates.

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One was at a fairly large evangelical church, Northwest Community Church, on perseverance of the saints.

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Now remember, Jerry had been John Gerstner's favorite student so he was a former

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Presbyterian, so he knew Reformed theology pretty well. And Scott Hahn had gone to Gordon -Conwell?

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I think it was Gordon -Conwell. And so we had a debate one night in a

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Protestant church on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which ended up being a debate, if you're familiar with this, about Augustine's doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which is not what most

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Reformed people believe, because Augustine believed in baptismal regeneration, but he also believed in divine election.

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And so he believed that only the elect were given the gift of perseverance. So people could become true

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Christians, but they'd fall away because they weren't of the elect. Now, I don't know how you really make that work.

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I don't know how you really make that work as far as what regeneration means, but we can't go into that right now.

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The next night, we debated at what's called

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City of the Lord in Tempe, Arizona, on the papacy. And this was the first time

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Catholic Answers was going to debate someone, they didn't know this at this point, was gonna debate someone who knew something about church history.

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Scott Hahn moderated that debate, and I'll never forget it.

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Jerry was frustrated, Scott Hahn was livid.

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There were Catholics getting up and walking out of the debate, slamming the door as they left.

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It's quite distracting, by the way. And when the debate was over,

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Scott Hahn turned around to the two of us, and he angrily said to me, you blew it because you brought up papal infallibility, and that wasn't the topic of this debate.

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And then he turned to Jerry, his good friend. I mean, there are tapes of them talking about how they converted together and all the rest of this stuff.

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There were already Protestants gathering around Jerry's table, and in front of all these people,

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Scott Hahn says to Jerry Matityx, and you blew it because you used the scriptures as your only source of information, and you can't do that.

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And he spun around and left Jerry alone in this feeding frenzy of Protestants who were quite excited about what they had just watched.

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And that was the first indication that I got that there were problems coming in the

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Catholic Answers Camp, shall we say. So it was 1993, and if Kelly or somebody could get me a bottle of water,

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I'd really appreciate it. I don't have anything up here. It was 1993.

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Does anybody remember when the Pope came to Denver, Colorado in 93 for World Youth Day? Anyone remember that happening?

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Just a couple people. Thank you, ma 'am. Rich and I drove up in your

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Firebirds? Sunbird, Sunbird, Firebird, it was a bird. We drove up to Denver, and we did some fun stuff while we were up there.

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We were sitting in a Winchell's Donuts one morning, and I was looking at the newspaper, and I saw that, it was very healthy

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Winchell Donuts, but well, there are no such thing as a healthy Winchell. Does Winchell's Donuts even exist anymore?

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I haven't seen one forever. Do they even exist? Nobody knows. You're all just staring at me. Okay, Chris, does

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Winchell's Donuts exist anymore? They never existed. Oh, in New York, okay. I thought that was just a general statement.

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Yeah, somebody Google it real quick, see if Winchell's still exists. Anyways, I saw that the

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Papal Treasures Exhibit was in town, and that they had a page from Manuscript P72.

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And so I told Rich, we're going to see this. Now, I'm not normally the type of person that goes to stuff like that, but to see,

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P72 is the earliest handwritten manuscript we have of 1st, 2nd Peter, and Jude. And so Rich can tell you the story of what it was like.

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It was one of the first things in the display. I've told this story, I don't know how many times over the years. It was one of the first things you came to.

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It was under glass. It's a very readable manuscript. In fact,

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I could actually show you what it looks like. And I'm just,

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I don't have words. I'm thinking about the fact that this was written almost 1 ,800 years earlier, and unfortunately, it's probably not gonna,

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I'm not gonna be able to do that, sadly. Sorry about that. I was actually gonna pull it up and show it to you, but I can't open

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Keynote right now. It'll, it's a long story. Hey, wait a minute.

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Wait one minute. That's why they put the search function in, ding, ding, ding.

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Okay, there it is. This is the exact page that was on display at, in 1993, when

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Rich and I saw this in Denver, Colorado. And when I say it's very readable, look up here.

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Petru Epistolae Bae, 2nd Peter. Alpha, Petru Epistolae Alpha would be 1st

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Peter. And you see these words that have the lines above them? Those are called

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Nomena Sacra, the sacred names. This is actually 2nd Peter 1 .1,

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so this is called a Granville Sharp construction. Jesus identified as God here. I'm sitting here and I'm reading it, and I'm just blown away by the fact this is the first manuscript we have of 1st 2nd

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Peter in Jude. So I'm not going on to look at the next things.

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There are crowns and diamonds and gold, and I don't care about any of this stuff.

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I'm just looking at this manuscript. So Rich is standing there and people would walk up and they'd look down, they'd look at it, and they'd look at the description.

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They'd look over at Rich, because I'm not paying them any attention at all. They'd look over at Rich and go, can he read that?

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And Rich would go, yeah. And they'd, look at this, Harold. This man's reading this ancient manuscript.

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And so this group would start gathering around and the security people are looking at us. And so Rich would drag me off to go look at a tiara for a while.

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And then we'd make our way back until they finally forced us to leave. Yes, I had to get out of there before we were getting in trouble.

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So that was the first exciting thing that we did in Denver. But the next exciting thing, then we did evangelism.

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So we're amongst all these young Catholic kids and we're passing out tracts and having incredible conversations and then they did this big, long trek out to the mass.

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And we're down in this, like a gully type thing. Cherry Creek Park. And we're trying to pass out tracts to all these people that are trudging miles to get to the mass.

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And we finally came up. Sometimes folks, this is a real practical thing. You need to have a certain line to go with your tract when you're passing out tracts.

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If you just stand there like this, no one's gonna take it from you. You've got to move toward them.

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You've got to engage them. You've got to be saying something. And so Rich and I came up. I'm not sure who came up with it.

31:02

I'll give him the credit if he'd like it. But these folks are tired. They're carrying stuff.

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And so we came up with the line, special lightweight tracts and it would make people chuckle just enough to break the ice and get more tracts out when we were distributing them.

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Because that's why we had gone up there in the first place. But the main thing we did when we were up there is I debated gerrymatitics for seven and a half hours over two nights on the papacy.

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And we did the first night at Denver Seminary, the second night at the

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Presbyterian Church that is most famous for being where John Denver's funeral was.

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And so, and that was just a couple of years later. On the first night, and I've had some people come up to me even here and say, you know, what

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I'd really like to hear from you is how do you prepare to do debates? You know, give us some guidance.

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And in fact, hey guys at the booth. Hey guys at the booth. Anybody at the booth?

32:14

Hello. Yo, you guys over here. I'm talking to you.

32:20

Yeah, you. I need one of these shirts with the thing on the back. The list.

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We've done a few debates. As you can see, I'm wearing, but you can't see this in the rear. That one,

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I need that. Bring it over, bring it over, bring it over. As of Saturday, I've done 182 moderated public debates.

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They're all, almost all of them, yeah, you show them. All but two of them are on the back of our road trip.

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You know how the bands do the road trip thing in all the cities they went to. So we took that idea. And there's all the debates.

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I think it indicates, what does it say? The topic and where and the date.

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So the date, the topic, and does it say where it was? Yes, and where it is as well. So they're all there over 40 years.

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And so I've had a lot of people say, what about the rest of us? What can you tell us? Well, I'll tell you when

33:23

I learned one of the most important things that has allowed me to be a successful debater for all these years.

33:39

That was called a t -shirt giveaway without an announcement. So, oh,

33:45

Kelly, Kelly said to do it. So, yeah, nothing, boom. All right, there you go. And if it's not your size, you can take it back and exchange it.

33:53

So that would be the way to do that. Anyway, here's what happened. And here's,

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I think this is one of those spiritual things that happened in my life, okay? I was at Denver Seminary.

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I had just finished the debate with Jerry Matatick, and we had done the New Testament evidence. Then we were gonna do the historical evidence the next night at the

34:16

Presbyterian Church. A man who I wish I knew who it was, and if you're here, please tell me it was you.

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But a man came up to me afterwards, shook my hand, said, thank you for coming. That was a very good debate.

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And then he said, let me just give you a suggestion. He said, you need to bring your audience with you.

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It's not just a matter of how many facts you can throw out in 20 minutes.

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Because collegiate debate, that's what it is. People sit there, and no one can understand what they're saying, and it accomplishes nothing, but that's collegiate debate.

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He said to me, you need to make sure that the audience understands your points and you bring them along in the process.

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Now, the natural human response, you've just done a debate, and the natural human response is, if someone criticizes something about that debate, is to become defensive.

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But I didn't, not because I'm a special person or I don't become defensive when somebody criticizes me or anything, but I listened to what he said.

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I don't know if it was the way he said it, I don't know if there was just something trustworthy about the man, but I listened.

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And so I changed my presentation for the next evening, and I started to make sure, and one thing wasn't difficult for me to do, the biggest advantage

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I have had in debate for years was the fact that I started at age 16 doing radio.

36:20

Hey, man. I started doing radio, and when you do radio, live radio,

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I mean, I was playing LP records, all right? Not even CDs, nothing on disc, there wasn't anything like that.

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And when you're doing that and you have UPI National News coming up at the top of the hour, you've gotta be done at the top of the hour, because there's gonna be a beep, and UPI News is gonna start.

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You don't have time to go over. And so I knew how to back time, I knew how to handle a clock, and it's amazing how few of the people

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I've debated can do that. There have been some, there have been some, obviously, but so many times

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I'd have people I was debating, and they're going along, and they're making some good presentations, but they didn't time things out, they didn't know where they were.

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The time runs out on them, halfway through their last point, they can't finish it, and they say, well,

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I'll have to pick that up later or something, and they've lost the audience. The audience is like, well, here's someone that didn't really do their preparation, stuff like that.

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And so that part wasn't difficult to do, but the main thing I learned from him was, you've got to bring your audience along with you.

37:46

Shortly after that, I came to understand that the key to debate is cross -examination.

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I didn't know that, I didn't, in the first six, seven debates I did, I just sort of stumbled into that part, didn't really enjoy it, didn't really like it.

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But that's the only reason to have a debate. If you're not going to have cross -examination, just go watch that guy's videos and that guy's videos, and you're done, that's all there is to it.

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But even as Proverbs 18 says, the first person to present his case seems right until his neighbor comes along and examines him.

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And that's when I really discovered that cross -examination is where a debate takes place.

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And the worst people, the worst people I have debated in cross -examination were attorneys.

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I've debated a lot of attorneys. And evidently, the ones I debated, now there were two exceptions to this, there's been two exceptions out of 182, well, they weren't all attorneys, obviously, but there were two attorneys

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I debated that knew how to do cross -ex. The rest of them, I'll just give you an example, go watch the debate on the doctrine of God that took place at the

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University of Utah between myself and Martin Tanner. Martin Tanner is an

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LDS attorney. I had been on his radio program, in fact, Rich was with me, when

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I was on KTKK Radio in Salt Lake City, small little radio station, small little studio,

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Martin Tanner was the host, there were two BYU professors on the other side,

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I was alone, and they were taking calls in Salt Lake City. That's about as stacked a deck as you can possibly get.

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And so we arranged a debate with Martin Tanner, except this time he's not in control, it's equal time.

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In the cross -examination, he simply fell apart. He did not know how to answer questions succinctly, clearly,

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I could ask questions that are literally arguing my point, and he didn't know how to rebut it, and then when he would ask me questions, it was literally like, what do you call, they didn't have this when

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I was a kid, but there's a form of little league now where you have your own team pitches you the ball really carefully so you can get the ball into play or something, it's not

40:28

T -ball, but what's it called? Coach pitch, okay, that's what it was, it was like, here comes the softball, oh, there it goes again, it's just,

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I was just stunned, it was just like, it's not supposed to be this easy, and it's a little embarrassing.

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So, attorneys, not good at cross -examination. So, you learn things over the years, and you learn to appreciate opponents who are trustworthy and honorable, and that's why

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I've said over and over again, in my Muslim debates, I did a debate in 2011 in Australia, New South Wales, on the, can men become gods?

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And the young man that I debated, I had had a discussion with him before this, but when we did the debate itself, what blew me away was that he took the time to read my book on the

41:37

Trinity, almost none, in fact, he's the only Muslim opponent I've ever had who actually read my book on the

41:44

Trinity, and attempted to formulate, his name is Abdullah Kunda, he tried to formulate his presentation in a way that would be understandable to Christians, that is stunningly unusual, stunningly unusual, and I should say,

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Abdullah, over the years, has joined probably five or six of my seminary classes in the

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United States via Skype, Zoom, whatever, Skype back then, or whatever form it was, and since he's in Australia, he'd get up at like three o 'clock in the morning to join seminary classes that I was teaching for different seminaries, to answer questions from my students, he's a wonderful, not as young a man as he used to be, but he's a dad with kids now, but just a wonderful guy, that's the best debate that I've had with a

42:42

Muslim, the best debates I've had with Roman Catholics have been with Mitch Pacwa, Mitch Pacwa is a

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Jesuit priest, now if you know anything about the modern Jesuits, the modern

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Jesuits are as leftist, liberal as you can get, Francis is a

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Jesuit, all right? Mitch Pacwa is the world's most conservative

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Jesuit, he really is, and I have to say,

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Mitch Pacwa never engaged in cheap debating tricks, he never refused to give an honest answer to a question, and that made for the best debates, we did justification, the mass, priesthood, papacy, and sola scriptura, the sola scriptura debate

43:39

I really highly recommend to you, it was in San Diego in 1999, any debate up to 2001,

43:50

I will still have hair, but most of the debates from about 96 onward, you will be able to tell,

43:58

I shouldn't have still had hair, okay? It was getting bad already at that point, and as you can tell, it's getting bad for Rich right now, so he doesn't get to see himself from behind, so I'm just simply saying, but Mitch and I, those five debates

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I think really define how Roman Catholics and Protestants should debate, there was no compromise, but there was also no cheap debating tricks, nothing like that,

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I have great respect for Mitch Pacwa as an individual, and would love to have further debates in the future if that was even something he would be interested in doing.

44:43

Then came 2006, I am so thankful in God's providence that after 2001, after 9 -11, everybody wanted to write a book on Islam after 9 -11,

45:01

Bethany House Publishers talked to me about writing a book on Islam after 9 -11, and it didn't happen, and I'm so very, very thankful that it didn't,

45:11

I was nowhere near ready for that, and what happened was two young, zealous students at Biola contacted me, and they said, would you be willing to debate

45:28

Shabbir Ali? Now, I didn't know who

45:33

Shabbir Ali was, and so I managed to stumble upon, even this early period, because the net still wasn't overly big at that point, a resource that recorded a lot of Muslim debates and things like that, and so I started downloading and listening to Shabbir's presentations, and I discovered that what he was doing was he was using our liberals against us, and most apologists don't read a lot of liberal or left -leaning theology, but one of the things in God's providence he did,

46:15

I was visiting Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary with a view to moving there and going to school after I graduated from Grand Canyon, when we discovered that we were pregnant, and we were gonna have our first kid, and we were already poor as church money says it was, so there was no way we were gonna be able to move, especially to California, of all places, and so I ended up, the only way

46:42

I could pursue my first master's degree was through Fuller Theological Seminary's extension in Phoenix, but thankfully, most of the professors they used came from Grand Canyon, so for example,

46:55

I had the same Greek professor for seven consecutive years, and so they used some fairly conservative professors, but still, some flew in, and so that meant

47:10

I had to deal with theology way off to my left.

47:17

I had to read commentaries from people way off to my left. I had to have professors way off to my left, and I remember one class on the

47:27

Pentateuch, we were assigned to write a review of each one of the commentaries that we were to read, and when

47:35

I read Gerhard von Raadt's commentary on Deuteronomy, you had to write the positives and the negatives, and so when

47:45

I wrote the positives, the entire portion was, this book has a very nice binding, and then

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I launched into the negatives, and I got a 98 on the book review because the professor could tell

48:00

I read the book and had meaningful reasons for rejecting what it had to say.

48:08

I never knew, I didn't know at the time, you know, Lord, why am I at Fuller? This is not, you know, even though I did have a great church history professor who instilled in me a love for church history, which is why

48:21

I'm now professor of church history at GBTS, but when

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I listened to Shabir, I realized I know exactly where this man's coming from.

48:32

This is what I've dealt with at Fuller and every place else. So they arranged a debate at Biola University with Shabir Ali.

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Now what's interesting is, there was a professor at Biola who headed up a somewhat secret group.

48:51

It's known now, so I can talk about it. The group is called SWAD, S -W -A -D,

48:57

Scholars With a Dream, and the whole purpose of the group was to train scholars to get

49:04

PhDs in relevant areas to the Quran so as to help strengthen the church in its apologetic against Islamic apologetics and theology.

49:13

I didn't know anything about this, and the guy who was in charge of it didn't know who I was, and so when he got wind that there was gonna be a major debate on campus with Shabir Ali, and he knew who

49:25

Shabir Ali was. Shabir's a very good debater, and he had been making mincemeat out of most of the

49:30

Christians that he was debating. He tried to get the debate stopped because he didn't know who

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I was, but those two students, and they've remained friends of mine to this day, hung in there, and the debate took place.

49:48

Now, you were there, right? Rich was there. When we got there, remember?

49:58

Okay, now he's laughing too. It takes a little while for the memory to kick in. We get there, and what they've got are two comfy chairs and a little table in between with a flower on it.

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Now, I know Shabir Ali, and I know me, and we're not gonna sit in two comfy chairs with a flower between us and have a nice little conversation.

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That may be what they were into at Biola at the time, but that wasn't what we were gonna be doing, and so we're just like, no.

50:32

We both take notes. We're both gonna have books on our table. We need tables.

50:38

This is a debate, and they weren't overly happy about it, but they did what we told them to do, and that was the beginning of my debates with Muslims, and as of still today,

50:54

I have done more debates with Muslims globally than with any other group.

51:00

I think we've done about 40. We haven't done any for a while because I'm not flying anymore, and we are doing most of them in London and in South Africa, but that evening, halfway through the debate when we took a break,

51:17

Shabir Ali, an experienced debater, stood up during the break, walked over to me, shook my hands, and said, congratulations.

51:29

Now, you don't do that halfway through a debate. That had never happened before, but Shabir knew that I knew the things the theology he was using against me better than he knew the theology he was using against me, and I had listened to so many hours of Shabir Ali by that point that during the cross -examination,

51:53

I was able to catch him up on an error he had made numerous times in his previous debates because he couldn't read

52:00

Greek, and you watch the debate. It's on YouTube, and you'll see him going,

52:06

I'll say, but the problem is that's the same word in Greek, and he said, well, you have given me further reason to continue the studies that I've begun in Greek, but I never finished.

52:20

Thank you very much, and so what happened was, at the end of the debate, the professor that tried to stop the debate came up, shook my hand, and gave me his card and said, we need to talk, and they immediately brought me into SWAD, and they paid for about three years.

52:47

I had an Arabic tutor that I meet with regularly. Some of you have seen him because about four years later when the

53:00

Ergen -Kanner stuff started happening, how many of you remember the Ergen -Kanner scandal? Boy, wow.

53:08

I talked to a graduate of Liberty Theological Seminary up in Pennsylvania.

53:14

He had never heard of the name Ergen -Kanner who had once been president of Liberty Theological Seminary, so that part of their history has already been put under the rug, shall we say, but Ergen -Kanner was a guy who claimed to be a former jihadi and all the rest of this stuff, and it was all made up.

53:36

It was completely fake, but he fooled everybody and spoke at big conferences and even became president of Liberty Theological Seminary, and he claimed to have debated

53:48

Shabir Ali. That was his fatal mistake. A Muslim sent me a recording of him having claimed to have debated

53:56

Shabir Ali. Well, I have access to Shabir. We have each other's emails, so I wrote to Shabir, and he said,

54:01

I've never met the man. Never met the man, and that's where the wheels fell off, and it's a long and sordid and sad story, but you may have seen a video where I'm sitting with a

54:17

Arabic -speaking man, Issam Atallah, and I'm playing

54:22

Ergen -Kanner, faking Arabic. Now, Issam is from Syria, okay?

54:29

It's his native tongue, and he's my tutor, and so we'd go, so, Issam, do you understand anything he just said?

54:36

Nope. How would you say what he said he was just saying? And then he'd give it to me in Arabic. It was the beginning of the end for Ergen -Kanner at that particular point in time, so that debate led to my ability to pick up Arabic and to expand the work we were doing in Islam, and so you'll notice there are some topics

55:00

I haven't debated. I don't believe anyone can be an expert in everything.

55:07

I don't claim to be the Bible -answer man. I don't think the Bible -answer man should claim to be the Bible -answer man, especially anymore, but I've just recognized the

55:20

Lord providentially kept us from expanding faster than we could handle it.

55:26

Let's just put it that way, and I'm very thankful for that. When you look, once you get this much snow on the chin, you can look back, and you start seeing the outlines of the providence of God in your life, and so, for example,

55:44

I've studied Hinduism. I've studied Buddhism. It doesn't stick in my mind.

55:52

Maybe if I moved into a context where I'm constantly dealing with Buddhists or Hindus, maybe it would. I'm not in that context.

55:58

It just doesn't stick, so I'm thankful for those of you that are good with that kind of stuff, but don't ask me to do that.

56:07

I have yet to debate Eastern Orthodoxy. I probably will. I think that that's probably gonna be necessary within the next year, year and a half, but I've always hesitated, and the primary reason for that hesitation is that I actually understand

56:27

Eastern Orthodoxy, and I understand that it is not the kind of system of thought that can be debated without fundamentally compromising its own principles, so if you debate an

56:43

Eastern Orthodox person in the West, you're just debating a person who's probably gonna be using the same categories as a

56:52

Roman Catholic would, whereas an Eastern Orthodox person in Ukraine or Russia does not think that way.

57:00

They don't think that way, and so there's a, I'm not sure how that's gonna work out, but since there is so much interest right now in Eastern Orthodoxy, that probably will end up taking place, but over the years since then,

57:16

I do want to acknowledge Chris Arntzen down front here. Chris set up so many of those debates on Long Island.

57:25

If you've seen those Roman Catholic debates and enjoyed them, then you know that there was always a comedy routine at the beginning of each debate, starring

57:34

Chris Arntzen, and somehow, I'm not sure how he did it, but when

57:39

Chris first met me, he will tell you I had no sense of humor. I was

57:45

Reformed Baptist, straight -laced, boring, okay?

57:52

I couldn't tell a joke for the life of me. In fact, Chris may remember when I slaughtered that joke at Tuscarora.

57:59

Remember, you remember that one? Because you knew what the joke was, and then I slaughtered it because I wouldn't use an off -color word, and it destroyed it, so, and you just looked like you were in pain.

58:10

Anyway, but Chris arranged all those things, and somehow over the years, I managed to steal his sense of humor, and now

58:18

I use it against him all the time. It's really strange how that works, but that's how that's, but Chris was really important in arranging all that, and then

58:27

I don't know if Michael Fallon is around anymore or if he's over here. Mike, are you within sound distance here?

58:34

I don't see anything, but Michael Fallon, you've probably heard of Michael Fallon, Sovereign Nations.

58:43

All that stuff you hear from Mike, you know where it started? From him arranging cruises and debates for Alpha and Omega Ministries.

58:53

That's how it started. He was a teaching tennis professional when I first met him, and then he arranged the debates with John Dominic Crossan, with Bart Ehrman, John Shelby Spong, Michael Fallon arranged all those debates, and so we began expanding out and doing more in other areas as time passed by, and that has led to where we are here now today.

59:24

I don't know when we began, but we're coming up on a, okay, good. So we've gone about an hour, and I don't want to cause any of you to fall asleep listening to our stories, but I just want to thank

59:37

God for 40 years of ministry in Alpha and Omega Ministries. We're not done yet.

59:44

I don't want to be done yet. I think, I've still got a few years left in me.

59:50

I'm not sure about Rich, but we'll see what happens. He thinks he looks younger than I am, and he's probably right.

59:58

That's probably true. He's older than I am. Not much, but he is older than I am. We're not done yet.

01:00:04

There's still a lot of challenges out there, and I just want to thank all of you, not only for sitting here and listening to me reminisce about our debate history, but it truly, one of the main reasons

01:00:19

I wanted to have Kelly make it to G3 this time, standing there and listening, and Rich remembers this from the past number of years, standing there and listening to you all talk about especially what the dividing line in the debates have meant to you.

01:00:36

It makes it all worthwhile. I mean, that's the whole reason. We've never tried to replace the church.

01:00:42

We've never tried to eclipse the church. We've never tried to do anything other than to equip people, and so to hear people who have been led out of error, kept out of error, were equipped to get other people out, that's the most exciting thing that I can hear.

01:00:58

It's the most encouraging thing I can hear, so please pray for us as we press forward, seek to do what's right in God's sight, and try to be consistent, because that's all we've been trying to do since we started in 1983, and so pray for us.

01:01:15

Thank you for being here this evening, and I guess I'm supposed to play the music to get us out of here.