Is the Bible the Word of God?

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The following presentation is a production of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc. and is protected by copyright laws of the
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United States and its international treaties. Copying or distribution of this production without the expressed written permission of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc.
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is prohibited. The debate is presented by the
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Center of Religious Debate here at Calvary Church, and we welcome you. Tonight's participants are both accomplished debaters, both have experience debating the topics, and both are here to debate in a good spirit of open debate.
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I would first like to introduce to you, representing the affirmative position of the topic,
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Is the Bible We Have Today the Word of God? Dr. James White, the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a
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Christian apologetics organization. He is the author of more than 20 books, a professor, an accomplished debater, and has engaged in more than 95 moderated public debates.
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He is also an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and you can visit his website at aomin .org,
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that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G. Representing the negative is
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Sheikh Awal. Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Awal is a scholar of Islamic science, comparative religion, and logic, and a student of Sheikh Ahmad Didat.
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He is the founder and director of Zaitoon Dawa Institute, a think tank research center with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and branches in New York, Atlanta, and Africa.
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The center specializes in propagation of Islam to people of different faiths through the medium of science and comparative analysis.
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Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Awal is a product of Kaduna Polytechnic College of Environmental Studies. He has a degree in engineering surveying.
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He is also a graduate of Kano State College of Irrigation and Surveying. Sheikh Awal has debated many
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Christian theologians both in the United States and in Africa. He has lectured in colleges, universities, and symposiums.
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He travels all over the United States and does programs in prisons and radio stations about Islam. Sheikh Awal has written two books,
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Islam and Science Volume 1, and Islam and Christianity Volume 1. He resides in Kent, Washington.
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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our participants. Tonight's topic is the
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Bible we have today. The word of God is a fundamental question asked of both the Christian and the Muslim. The linchpin of our faith rests upon the truth of this question.
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Tonight we are not here to present to you a one -sided argument, but to present to you two positions on both sides of this question.
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It is not our judgment to pass on to you, but for you to come to a conclusion for yourself. As the evidence is presented from both sides, may you take that and seek
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God with a humble mind and heart, and ask for him to reveal to you the truth.
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Our format is as follows. You have a 20 -minute opening statement for each participant, followed by a 12 -minute rebuttal.
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We will then take a five -minute intermission. At that point, we are asking you to please take some of the slips that are in the pew in front of you that say memo on them, and write down any questions you have for either one of our participants.
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Following the intermission, we will return for a five -minute rebuttal, and then a 15 -minute cross -examination by both participants.
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We will then have a seven -minute closing argument for each, and then we will take the time that is remaining and evenly distribute it among the participants for Q &A.
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With that, I thank you once again for coming and participating. We ask you to please remain silent and hold all applause during the debate so as not to interrupt the speakers.
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I introduce to you Dr. James White for his opening statement. Well thank you very much, and good evening.
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Thank you for being here. I have been looking forward to this opportunity for quite some time, and I hope you will be blessed as we discuss this question, is the
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Bible that we possess today the word of God? Specifically, I would like to respond to a comment that Sheikha Wall made in a debate in 2009 when he said,
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I would have proved 100 % that the Bible has been mutilated beyond recognition.
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There are many Muslims who believe that the Bible we possess today has been grossly tampered with and altered from what was originally written by the followers of Jesus so long ago.
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Our discussion this evening, our debate this evening, will be to look at the facts of that matter and to establish that when you open your
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Bible today and you read from the book of Romans, you read from the book of Matthew, what you are reading is a clear and accurate rendering of what the original followers of Jesus themselves actually wrote and what
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God has desired for us to have to this very day. Now we must think clearly and accurately about the subject this evening because there is so much misinformation that is available out there.
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The Bible was written over 1 ,500 years by 40 different authors in two major languages,
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Hebrew and Greek, and one minor language, Aramaic. There are about 12 chapters grand total in the
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Aramaic language. That is a long period of time. Many authors, much changed over those 1 ,500 years as far as the world, its history, so on and so forth, and the
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Bible covers all of that period. Now it's very important to understand the Bible in its original languages must be distinguished from all later translations, references to the
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NIV, the New King James Version, the New American Standard Bible, et cetera, are to translations.
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They are not to the Bible. Just as one could refer to translations of the
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Koran such as those of Yusuf Ali, Muhammad Piktal, Assad, Maududi, et cetera, and other translations that are out there, these do not amount to different Korans any more than the
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New American Standard Bible is a different Bible than the English Standard Bible. Remember, English did not exist when the
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Bible was written, and therefore we must distinguish the original language texts from the
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English texts we have today. Right there on my desk I have the Greek Bible, the
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Hebrew Bible in one volume together, and if we're going to make allegations of corruption concerning the
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Bible, it must be proven from the original languages in the exact same way that I would seek to prove any changes in the
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Koran, not on the basis of a translation, but on the basis of the Arabic original.
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Now the standard text of the Old Testament is called the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. This is the
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Hebrew text which is studied in both Jewish and Christian contexts around the world today.
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The standard text of the New Testament is the Nestle -Aland United Bible Societies text. Currently the
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Nestle -Aland text is in the 27th edition. The 28th is actually completed but has not yet been printed.
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Portions of it are available online. These are available to us this evening in the debate to examine and to look at in regards to our subject.
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Now once again, thinking clearly and accurately, fair and scholarly discussion must be clear as to what kind of corruption is being alleged.
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What kind of corruption? What do I mean? Well, most of the time in the Islamic context we are talking about textual issues, textual changes, changes to the actual
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Hebrew and Greek texts in which the Bible was originally written. So those are the textual issues and I will spend most of my time on that particular subject this evening.
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But we also have historical issues. Historical issues, issues in regards to what took place historically.
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Is the Bible accurate in its recording of history? Things like that. Those would be historical issues.
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Thirdly, we have theological issues, questions regarding the consistency of the theological presentation of the
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Scripture. Frequently, these focus upon differences between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, fulfillment themes in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, fulfilling the prophecies of the Old Testament, fulfilling the foreshadowing of the law, issues such as this.
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These would all be found in theological issues. And finally, we have translational issues.
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And these would go to differences in translation between modern English translations.
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But again, those really wouldn't be allegations of corruption of the Bible so much as they would be allegations that possibly the original language text is not clear enough to indicate its actual meaning or something along those lines.
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But again, we would have the exact same issues to raise in regards to the Quran because the many differences that exist between the translations that have been provided in the
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English there as well. So these would be the areas we would want to be very specific. If we're going to make allegations of corruption, we need to be specific as to what areas we are referring to.
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Let's look at the textual issues because that seems to be the primary area. The text of the Old Testament has been transmitted in its earliest portions, especially in the
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Torah, for over 3 ,000 years, over twice as long as the Quran. It was the particular possession of the
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Jewish people until the coming of the Messiah, after which it, along with the New Testament, became much more widely distributed as the
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Christian people took those scriptures primarily in Greek translation and then in Latin translation all around the world.
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That's the Old Testament. The Jewish scriptures, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim were written over the course of nearly 1 ,000 years, coming together into a single whole about 250 years before the time of Christ.
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Now the New Testament, in contrast to that, was written over a much shorter period of time, only about 20 to 40 years by about eight authors.
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Most scholars believe the Epistles of Paul and others were written prior to the Gospels themselves, although there would have been some overlapping in the earliest dating of the
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Gospels themselves with the Epistles of Paul. Now the New Testament books were written by multiple authors.
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They were written to multiple audiences from multiple locations. They were copied widely and passed amongst the most primitive communities.
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This is extremely important. This multifocality of the text means that the text could never be controlled by any one person or group.
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There was never such a thing as a Christian Uthman who created a final version and hence could impact the meaning of that final version.
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The New Testament did not circulate in its most primitive forms as a body of text, one body of text.
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It circulated as individual letters, epistles, and books. And hence the idea of controlling them, editing them, inserting doctrines, taking doctrines out simply is historically untenable.
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And any accusations of that kind of changing will have to be examined in the light of history itself.
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There is no reason to see any of the New Testament books as having been written after the first century.
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All liberal arguments about later dates for some New Testament books are based upon theoretical reconstructions of early church context.
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For example, those people who would say the pastoral epistles are non -Pauline and come from the beginning of the second century do so on the basis of personal theories that they have created regarding the form of the early church that would indicate that those pastoral epistles reflect a later form of the early church.
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But how do they know what the early church looked like? It's all theoretical. Rather than going to the historical evidence themselves, they create theories and then alter the historical evidence to fit their theories.
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It is something that we have to deal with all the time. Now the period from AD 60 to AD 313 was one of persecution of the
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Christian faith by the Roman Empire. Possessing and reproducing the
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Christian scriptures became a crime. Christianity was a religio illicita, an illegal religion.
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Rome destroyed thousands of texts of the Old and New Testaments that were in possession of the
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Christian people. But Rome could not get to all of them. Here for example on the screen you see
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P52. P52 from around AD 100 to 150. It comes from John chapter 18.
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Now if you had gone to seminary in the late 1800s in Tübingen, Germany, you would have been told that scholarship had concluded that the
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Gospel of John could not have been written prior to 175 AD. I think
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God has a sense of humor in that he preserved this little credit card sized piece of manuscript which comes from 50 years before that to demonstrate that often scholars get it all wrong.
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This indeed is from John chapter 18, the interview between Jesus and Pilate where Pilate asks that great question, what is truth?
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Here we have one of the earliest fragments and it's from the Gospel of John, the very Gospel that gives us the clearest, most consistent from beginning to end testimony that Jesus Christ is the divine
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Son of God of any of the Gospels in our possession and it is the most clearly testified
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Gospel that we have. Here is another Gospel text, P66, which likewise contains the
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Gospel of John. This comes from around AD 150 to 200. We have at least 12 manuscripts coming from the 2nd century.
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As Bart Ehrman said in my debate with him a couple of years ago, the New Testament is the earliest attested book of antiquity.
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There is absolutely no question about that. The Quran is not a work of antiquity, it's medieval in its origination.
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That's why it would not be included in that discussion. Here is manuscript P101 from the 3rd century containing the
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Trinitarian passage of Jesus' baptism and his identification as the
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Son of God. I note this in particular due to the prevalence of the mythological belief that Jesus was the divine
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Son of God and that the doctrine of the Trinity was made up by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.
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Such ideas are popular in fictional works like the Da Vinci Code, but they find absolutely no place in serious historical study.
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No one who has ever studied the Council of Nicaea and the material that was written prior to the
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Council of Nicaea would ever come up with such a conclusion. Here is a graphic showing those 12 manuscripts from the 2nd century that give us portions of the entirety of the
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New Testament. We can examine these and they clearly demonstrate that our faith is built upon texts that are very primitive in their origination.
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Here is another primitive text. This is Codex Sinaiticus. Codex Sinaiticus was written between 325 and 350
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AD. That's the 4th century, not the 12th century. Codex Sinaiticus is in Greek and contains both the
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Old and New Testaments and is a tremendous treasure. And the reason I mention it is right here is a scan directly off of—all of Codex Sinaiticus is now available online—Matthew 17, verses 22 -23.
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The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him and he will be raised on the third day.
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There that is from the beginning of the 4th century from Codex Sinaiticus, the crucifixion and the deity of Christ in the most primitive documents.
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The New Testament has the earliest and widest attestation of any ancient document. Its immediate and widespread distribution absolutely precludes any kind of editing and any purposeful controlled corruption.
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Insertion of doctrines, excision of teachings requires centralized control when speaking of a body of text like the
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New Testament, but this is exactly what could never have happened with the New Testament.
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Now if Sheikha Wall wishes to allege textual corruption this evening, we have with us the best textual critical data.
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For example, on the screen you can see the Nessial in 27th edition in electronic form.
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You have the Greek text on the one side, you have the text of variations, the manuscripts, what they read and everything else is provided to you right there on the right hand side as well.
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We likewise have the CNTTS software available this evening as well as full transcriptions of Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and all the papyri sitting on my computer.
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Any questions of corruption we can simply look up the data themselves. We live in a wonderful day when it comes to that.
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Let me give you an example even though my time is fleeting. This is Romans chapter 5 verse 1. Let me blow it up for you so you can see what it is.
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Right there we have the term echo men. Echo men is the subjunctive form of echo men which is the actual normal reading.
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In fact let me show you what that looks like in a Greek text. There's what it looks like in the Greek text. You can see over on the left hand side echo men is the reading of that text but down below it lists echo men and it gives you the manuscripts that have that reading.
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You see Christians are wide open about our texts. We publish this kind of information and we don't hide it from anybody.
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We provide this kind of information and we discuss all this information, all of our critical commentaries and in the proper exegesis of the text of the script.
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However, where is the critical edition of the Quran? You see we must remember that any handwritten document that has been passed down through time has experienced textual corruption.
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For example, if we look at Surah 2, 222 and we compare the
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Fawq's palimpsest manuscript with the modern Uthmanic Quran, the top line you have
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Fawq's palimpsest manuscript, below you have the reading that we found in any of the Arabic Qurans that any of our
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Muslim friends here this evening would be carrying. And if you can read the Arabic language you will see that there are changes of words, changes of word order, changes of grammatical termination and form, changes in the editing of the text.
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Very clearly what we have here historically is an effort upon a later redactor to remove from the text of the
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Quran the influences of a certain man by the name of Ibn Masud. Ibn Masud's readings were different in places than those of the
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Uthmanic recension and for quite some time we have evidence of the continuing presence of Ibn Masud's readings in the historical text of the
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Quran. And so we need to keep this in mind, all of us, anyone who has ancient texts has to examine those texts in the light of history.
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Which is better, to have one edited text where you've removed all of this or to have one text with thousands of copies of it so you can reconstruct the original and you don't have to rely upon an editor and hope that he got it all right?
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That is one of the questions that we have when we discuss this issue. Now very quickly, historical issues, often allegations are made relating to secular history.
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In each of these instances, we simply ask that the Bible's testimony be treated fairly and not presumed guilty until proven innocent, just as Muslims ask for any such questions relating to the
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Quran. In regards to theological issues, theological accusations of corruption require one to allow the
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Bible to define its own teaching and theology. Demanding the Bible teach in accordance with external criterion is irrational.
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Muslims often import Quranic standards into their reading of the Bible, not realizing that logically the
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Bible, even by the Quran's own testimony, was sent down prior to the Quran. Islamic theology is definitely stuck with an anachronism as seen in Surah Al -Maidah verses 44 and following, where we read, for example,
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Let the people of the Gospel, the Al -Anjil, judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by the light of what
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Allah hath revealed, they are no better than those who rebel. I simply ask our Muslim friends, how could anyone hearing those words when they are recited by Muhammad judge by what was contained in the
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Injil if they no longer had the Injil? I've been waiting for an answer for that for a long time.
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I'm hoping to hear a contextually based one this evening. Now it is child's play to atomize the text of the
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Bible, tear it to shreds, and then by ignoring its author's intentions, turn it into a mishmash of self -contradiction.
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Anybody can do that. Just go on any atheist web board. It's done every day. It takes serious work and study to interpret any ancient text in its original context and language honestly and fairly.
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It takes work and it takes time. The greatest evidence of the Bible's inspiration is its transcendent harmony, a harmony not found in simplistic surface -level reading, but a harmony found in the deep and consistent themes that run from Genesis to Revelation.
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But it takes time to see those. Here we enter into issues regarding translational issues, relaying to the accurate contextual and understandable rendering of the meanings of ancient languages, a task faced by both
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Christians and Muslims in the handling of their sacred texts. And so again, if there are any translational questions that are raised, we can simply look to the original languages and test the
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English translations thereby. So here is my challenge, my challenge to Sheikh Awal this evening.
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He said that I would have proved 100 percent that the Bible has been mutilated, mutilated beyond recognition.
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Well, to do that, we have to prove this with scholarly textual data, not mere accusations, but citations of the recognized scholarly material in regards to the text of the
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New Testament. Prove this with scholarly textual data. Prove this with careful and accurate handling of the text and the context, not doing things like citing
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Paul in his Corinthian literature, where he says that he has no command of the
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Lord, that is, no tradition from the Gospels of Jesus about what we should do about women who are left by their unbelieving husbands or spouses and say, oh, you see,
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Paul was just giving his own personal opinion. That's not accurate handling. That's not dealing with the text in context.
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We need careful and accurate handling of the text and the context, and we likewise need to prove this with meaningful historical documentation in regards to the allegations of corruption.
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That and only that is what will fulfill a challenge in this evening of a scholarly debate to show respect to you, the audience, to handle the information properly and to honor
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God and the truth, al haqq. The only way you can define truth is by consistency, and that's what we need to do this evening.
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Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. White. Sheikh Awal, you may present your 20 -minute opening statement.
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I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the accursed. In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Do you not reflect upon the
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Qur 'an? Had it been from me, not from Allah, you would have found it in a brief confusion. We will show them our verses in the chapters and in yourselves until it becomes clear to you that it is the truth, or that it is not enough to say that it is a witness over all things.
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The moderator, Dr. White, and the audience, I greet you all with the universal peace of Islam, and that is, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
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When translated, it means, may peace and blessings of Allah, or God, be upon you all. This is the greeting of Moses, Isaiah, Nehemiah, John the
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Baptist, all the prophets use the same greeting, may peace and blessings of God be upon you, and that's exactly what
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I'm saying to you. Now, the topic at hand is the Bible, the Word of God. Dr.
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White has flowery presented his talks on this topic.
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And the Bible consists of, actually, a collection of 60 books for the
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Protestants and 73 books for the Roman Catholics, including, as you know, the Apocrypha, the seven doubtful books, which you call the
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Apocrypha. Meanwhile, the Catholics retain these seven books. They believe in it, but the
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Protestants don't believe in it. Yet, each and every one of them is claiming to have the Holy Ghost, which inspired them.
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The books were chosen after a long huddling and fighting by the councils of both Nicaea and that of the
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Carthage in 397. That is more than 300 years after Christ left the earth.
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Now, besides the fact that the original Bible and the modern
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Bible are in different languages, one of the major problems is that the original manuscripts does not exist anymore.
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Furthermore, the manuscripts which we do have are not exactly what was originally written. In other words, it's not the same.
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Now, what is left to us today are copies of copies, which have been copied as it manifested from the different versions that we have today available.
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Among other things, the Jehovah's Witnesses say they have found 50 ,000 errors in the
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Bible. They awake, you know, the booklet that they disperse awake.
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It says they have 1957 awake. They say they have 50 ,000 errors in the
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Bible. And these 50 ,000 errors in the Bible is manifested in the fact that in the book of, in the
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Revised Standard Version in the Preface, no, the second paragraph actually mentioned that the
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King James Version of the Bible have so many grave defects and that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for a revision.
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That's what the Revised Standard Version is saying, that the King James Version that we have, have so many grave defects and that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for a revision.
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And so therefore, it was actually, you know, revised, what that means. Now today, over 24 ,000 manuscripts that we have of the
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New Testament, in fact, no two of them are identical. The difference in them indicate the numerous additions and alterations, some accidental, some deliberate, were made by various authors and auditors and copies.
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Now, the most Leonard Christian theologians will tell you that most of the biblical authors are unknown. So most of that is always unknown.
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So the four Gospels are examples of books which did not carry the names of their actual authors.
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Example, if you read the book of Martin, chapter 9, verse 9, it says,
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While he, Jesus, was going out on the way, he saw a man named Martin sitting on the taskmaster's table, and he said,
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Follow me, and Martin rose and followed him. Now if Martin wrote this book, it would have been, While Jesus Christ was going out on the way, he saw me sitting down, and he said,
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Follow me, and I rose and followed him. So this is written by a third person. And then again, the book of Luke.
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Actually, Luke is not telling us that he received this revelation of his books through the
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Holy Spirit. He didn't say that. He said, Whilst many have written this book.
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In other words, he's talking about Mark, Matthew, you know, writing their own books to him. There's a lot of mistakes in them to him.
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He said, I feel it seems good to me also to write to you an orderly account, most excellent your philosopher.
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So now, here Luke is telling us that whatever he's writing, he feels good on his parts.
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He was not claiming to have Holy Spirit that directed him. He said it seems good to him to write something more orderly and more accurate than those that have been written.
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So here we can see Luke not claiming to have been inspired by God Almighty. And in the book of John, the last paragraph, the last book, the last verse, the last paragraph, it says,
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And we believe that the apostle who wrote this book is speaking the truth. And we believe in what he wrote.
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You see, someone else is saying something about the book of John. So actually, it's not the
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John that is making this statement. It is somebody else that's making this statement. Now, many biblical authors are almost unanimously agree that none of the gospel writers were either actual disciples of Jesus or even eyewitnesses to his ministries.
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And the example that could be cited in the New Testament is the book of Mark. Mark really was not one of the disciples of Jesus.
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Luke is not a disciple of Jesus. And we don't know which John. We have a lot of Johns. We don't know which
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John is actually being spoken about. Now, arguably, if the Bible were really the work of a perfect, all -powerful, and loving
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God, one would reasonably expect it to be consistent in every respect, clear and concise throughout, as compared to anything that could possibly be conceived by human intellect alone.
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And for example, like I've been saying, the word Christianity, for instance, is an import.
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Somebody imported that to be part of the Bible. And then this morning, I was saying that the Bible also is not in the
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Bible. And the Bible never mentioned, you know, I didn't see that it says it's in the Bible. And the first place or the first time that the
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Christians were actually called Christians is in the book of Acts 11 verse 26, when it says,
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And the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch. They were first called Christians in Antioch.
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So I don't know who gave them the name Christian. Well, certainly Christ never called his followers or those who follow him
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Christians. It came at a later time. It is something that came long after Christ left the earth.
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Now, while some apologies seems to offer some sort of explanation for nearly any biblical problems that can be uncovered, now such explanation should be unnecessary.
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Why? Because the point is not that whether some explanation can be conceived, but rather that a perfect, all -powerful, and all -knowing
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God should do a much better job in producing a book like that.
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Certainly, certain narrations in the Bible calls to question. As I'm reading the Bible, I've seen a lot of narrations, a lot of verses, a lot of words that comes to question as to how could this be from God Almighty.
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The God Almighty participated, for example, in a wrestling with one of his creator,
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Jacob. This can be found in the book of Genesis 32, I believe. That Genesis, that God Almighty had a wrestling, fighting with Jacob, things like this.
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We don't agree, and I don't think this definitely is the word of God. And eventually, God Almighty actually,
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Jacob was victorious during that fight. So things like that, we don't agree with it at all.
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It is unacceptable. Number two, like in Genesis 6, verse 5, And the
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Lord repented, the Lord repented that He created man, and it pains
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Him in His heart. Things like this, we know definitely the Lord couldn't repent.
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God Almighty knows everything from the beginning until the end. So how could God Almighty repent on what
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He intended to do to mankind? And it pains Him in His heart that He created mankind.
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In other words, God is not all -knowing. He didn't know that He's going to create human beings and they're going to go against His laws.
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You know, so therefore God repented. That definitely does not sound like the word of God. Now in the book of Exodus chapter 31, verse 17,
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It says, And God created the heaven and earth in six days, and on the seventh day He rested and He was refreshed.
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Also, this definitely, God couldn't speak like that. And God rested on the seventh day after His creation.
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For the six days He rested. The same thing was made in the Quran. The Quran said, Arabic It is
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Allah who created the heaven and earth in six days, and there is no weariness in Him, and there is no tiredness in Him.
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By looking at this, definitely you would come to the conclusion that this is definitely not how God sounds, and it is not the word of God.
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It is something that was inserted. And then we have in the book of Jonah chapter 3, verse 10, also where it simply said,
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And God repented upon the evil that He intended to do to mankind. I don't know what kind of God is that, that repented on the evil that He intended to do to mankind.
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And a lot of things, you know, I believe in textual, you know, the Bible itself, like we say, we have to believe in the
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Bible. What does the Bible entail? The word of God, the moment you read the word of God, you know definitely this must be the word of God.
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And if there is the word of any human beings, you know these are the word of human beings. In Islam, we are trained to, you know, see clearly and to differentiate the word of God and the word of man.
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And so definitely by us reading this part of this verse in the Bible, it definitely tells us that the
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Bible definitely have been written by someone other than God, at least some part of the Bible. We believe in Islam, the
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Bible contains the word of God. It also contains the word of the prophet and other, you know, messengers of God.
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It also contains the words of historians and other write -ups that is not supposed to be in there.
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But you place all these things in the book and you say we have to believe it to be the word of God. We say yes, the Bible is the word of God, but we have to explain.
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The Bible is not the word of God because we have to see. You have to do some seeing and see which one is actually the word of God.
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Now, what happened to Prophet Lot? It is so baffling to the
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Muslims. In fact, it is baffling to any mind. I mean, if you read those words carefully and analyze it, you could definitely tell that something is wrong somewhere.
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In that God Almighty, who is all perfect, and he chose messengers and prophets to be, you know, vehicle of righteousness.
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They are the one that are supposed to teach us how to follow God Almighty. Yet, we find a lot of, you know, write -ups that are in the
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Bible that is meant for these messengers of God Almighty. And it definitely doesn't make, you know, any, it doesn't click.
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Example in the book of Genesis 19 verse 30. Genesis 19 verse 30 tells us on how after God Almighty overturned
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Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his two daughters dwell in the cave or somewhere.
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And then we don't know what happened. All of a sudden, what we read is that one of the daughters, she gave her father
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Lot's wine to drink. When he had this wine, then he had intercourse with her. And they produced children, the
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Moabites and Ammonites. And the younger also, the following day, they gave her a wine also to drink. Now, things like this, we don't accept it to be the word of God.
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And I would not write this in my book. Neither would you write that in your book, revealing such words to a prophet of God.
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And so, we say, we call to question this kind of words. Again, we see the same thing in the book of Genesis chapter 32 verse 22.
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This is what happened between Reuben and his father, his father's wife. We know what happened there.
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Sometimes, I don't feel ease reading them because, you know, I'm not comfortable reading them. But that's what, that's just the way it is in the
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Bible. It says, and Reuben went upstairs where his father is up. And then, he went to, you know, he had a relationship with one of his father's wives.
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Definitely, I'm not comfortable saying this way, like I said, with all due respect. But these are some of the things that we see in the
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Bible. And we begin to realize that God Almighty would not reveal such words in the Bible. The same thing again, like I said, happened in Genesis 38 verse 15.
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Genesis 38 verse 15, something that happened between Judah and his daughter -in -law. It's a long story.
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Genesis 38 verse 15, it tells you how Judah and his daughter -in -law, as we underline, you know, they had a relationship and they had two, and she was pregnant,
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Tamar. She's the wife of his sons. But somehow, along the way, she had a relationship with her father -in -law.
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And they have twins, Zari and Fari. And this Zari and Fari, as we read in the book of Matthew chapter 1 verse 1, it tells you the genealogy of Jesus Christ all the way down up to Mary.
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One of the sons of this, you know, incest is sexual relations between two people that are too closely related to even get married.
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So this is what happened. And then, eventually, she had the children. And these children are on to become the great -grandfathers of Jesus Christ.
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We said, no, this definitely is not going to cut. We don't think this is, you know,
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Islamically and logically, something is wrong with the Bible. Maybe somebody inserted this information in there, just like the
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Quran said that the books have been changed. The Bible itself also mentioned that the books have been changed. And in 2
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Samuel, we see David and Bathsheba. We know what happened. Like I said, I'm not comfortable making this statement, but this is what is in there.
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And this is definitely what is making us to say, no, this could not be the word of God Almighty. Because David here, who is supposed to be a messenger of God, who is supposed to be, you know, the king, who is supposed to be someone that is very close to God Almighty, eventually had this relationship with, you know,
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Uriah's wife Bathsheba. And eventually, David committed voyeurism, we call that.
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And then, again, murder, eventually, because he had Uriah killed. And he, you know, took over the wife.
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And that is something that we don't accept in Islam. And, again, in 2 Samuel, chapter 13, verse 1, we have
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David's son, Ammon, one of the sons of David, Ammon. You know, had a relationship with his sister,
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Tamar. Again, I'm not going to go into details, but I'm just giving you, you know, an overview. This definitely does not cut in Islam or in any book of God Almighty.
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Why would God reveal this information to us? And then, again, we have in the book of Matthew 15, verse 21.
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This Matthew 15, verse 21, it is something that happened between Jesus Christ and a woman of Canaanites.
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You know, her daughter is possessed with the devil. In Matthew, chapter 15, verse 21, her daughter is possessed with the demons, this lady.
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And so she saw Jesus Christ walking, and she ran to him, and she fall, you know, in front of him.
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She said, Good Master, my daughter is possessed with the demons. Please heal her. Actually, he didn't say a word to her, you know.
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And she came to the other side. She kneeled down. The Bible says she kneeled down on him. And she said, Master, my daughter is possessed with the demons, with the devil.
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She have this type of something that's bothering her daughter. So she asked Jesus to intervene and heal her daughter.
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And he didn't say a word. So, finally, he rose up, and he began to walk. And she was crying, following him, asking him to heal her daughter.
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And he didn't say a word. And then finally, I think one of the disciples asked him to, Master, heal her.
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For she is crying unto us. In other words, do her something. You know, she's crying. She's making a scene. And he turned around, and he said,
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You know, I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not good to take the children's bread and give it to a dog like her.
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Calling her a dog, Jesus. I didn't say that. That's what's in the Bible. But I don't believe that Jesus Christ would call her a dog.
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He said, It is not good to take the children's bread and give it to a dog like her. A dog like her. Jesus Christ making this statement that if he is
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God, or if he is the Son of God, this is his Father's creation, just heal her.
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He said, No, it is not good to take the children's bread and give it to a dog. Dog like her. And she said,
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Master, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master's table. And Jesus said, Woman, great is thy faith.
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Let it be done as thy will. You want to eat the crumbs, go ahead and eat the crumbs. But me, I'm not going to give you the bread. Because the bread is meant for the children of Israel.
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So me looking at this word, and with a critical eye, I come to the conclusion, without any doubt, that this could not be from the lips of Jesus.
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Jesus couldn't have spoken like that. It might be something that crept into the mainstays. And so we have
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George Bernard Shaw. George Bernard Shaw lived, I think, in the 18th century in England somewhere.
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He wrote a book. The name of the book is The Genuine Islam. Now, in that book, he said that you should not let your children have access to the
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Bible. Why? Because this information that I've just read, as George Bernard Shaw read them, he realized that, you know, he made some statement.
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I'm not going to make those kind of statement. But George Bernard Shaw, he said, Do not let your children have access to it.
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The concept of God is radically different from that of the Bible, dealing with the messengers of God and apostles of God.
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The Bible have painted, you know, the prophets of God, messengers of God, you know, making them doing things that is so repulsive that you and I would not do.
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Yet God Almighty chose these people to be vehicle of righteousness, like I said. But eventually we see them falling down.
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And so this definitely is not accepted in Islam. Well, this is what the
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Bible said. You know, God is all merciful, most gracious. How could this word come from the word of God?
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And then God Almighty revealed this in the book of Ezekiel. Then we have the book of Numbers, chapter 1, verse 12, all the way down.
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As you read, Have you saved all the women alive?
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I don't understand why God Almighty would make such a statement, but yet we have it. This is what the
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Bible recorded. They utterly destroyed them in the city, both men and young.
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Yes. All right. Well, I'll save the rest. So hopefully I'll continue when I come to present myself.
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Thank you, Sheikh. Dr. Wright. 12 minute rebuttal. Thank you very much.
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I'll try to get each of the points that Sheikh Awal has raised in regards to the apocryphal.
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The apocryphal books were never accepted by the Jewish people as the inspired word of God. And, in fact, there was a long tradition of Christian scholarship all the way through to the
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Council of Trent in the 1500s that rejected the apocryphal scripture. Sheikh Awal said the Council of Nicaea chose the canon.
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The Council of Nicaea never said a word about the canon. That is a common myth. I would challenge Sheikh Awal to give us a single historical reference in primary form to anything from the
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Council of Nicaea about the canon of scripture. There is nothing. The Awake magazine was talking about translational issues in English.
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That's why they produced their own perversion of the Bible called the New World Translation. And, again, Sheikh Awal is not differentiating between textual and translational issues.
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He's going back and forth between issues regarding the text of the Bible and that of the translation of the
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Bible. He said no two manuscripts are identical. That is exactly true because they're all handwritten. No two manuscripts of the
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Quran are identical either if you'd actually examine them. And on my table I have the
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Topkapi manuscript. Compare it with the London manuscript. Compare it with the Paris manuscript. And you will find textual variation.
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That is the essence of handwritten documents. That is just simply what we have to deal with.
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Sheikh Awal frequently quotes Matthew 9 .9. And he says that this could not have been written by Matthew because if it had, then
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Matthew would have said he saw me. Why? I've always wanted Sheikh Awal's opponents to ask, why?
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Are there not many examples of people in the past who wrote books that included themselves in it that they didn't use the first person?
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Why couldn't Matthew, writing for a wider audience, refer to his own conversion in the third person?
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I've never heard an explanation for that. I would like to hear an explanation for that. He said that Luke just simply said that it felt good to him.
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Actually, it says it seemed right to him to study these things out and to give to Theophilus the exact truth.
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He interviewed people. He laid out the exact truth. That's what the prologue of Luke is talking about. Luke was in no way, shape, or form denying that the
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Holy Spirit of God is inspiring him because he simply did homework in the provision of the information, the historical information that he used.
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Likewise, the conclusion of John, have no problem whatsoever that the community that received it gave their testimony to it.
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The Holy Spirit of God is not limited in any way, shape, or form in that way. Then he said that we should not have to explain alleged errors in the
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Bible if it was really the word of God. Then why does Sheikhawal have to answer all the questions people ask about the
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Quran? Why was there just a debate on that subject that required Sheikhawal to give all sorts of answers about problems that we as Christians find in the
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Quran? We need to use the same standard for both sides. If you're going to use an argument that refutes the
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Bible and it refutes the Quran as well, well, that's self -refuting. If to say that we have to provide answers when people are confused about what the
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Bible says, might it be to their own ignorance of the Bible? Is that something wrong with the text of the
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Bible itself? I don't think so. He referred to Genesis 6 -5 and God's Nahum as if God didn't know what was going to happen.
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The problem is that God, the Bible, actually interacts with His own creation. And even though He did, in fact, decree the exact form of what takes place in this world, that does not mean that He is separated from His world and does not experience
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His passion for His people, His sorrow over their sin, and His joy in their repentance.
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That would require God to be dispassionate and disconnected from His universe, which He has not chosen to be.
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Yes, the Quran does misunderstand the book of Exodus when it said that God rested. The writer of the
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Quran is ignorant of the Old Testament and does not understand that God was saying that in the context of exhorting
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His people and providing to them an example of rest on the Sabbath day. It nowhere suggests that God was tired from the creation of the universe.
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Instead, God is providing to His people that example, which He does over and over again. Now, Sheikhawal's misunderstandings of the
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Bible do not make the Bible any less than God's word. If we can provide meaningful, contextual, fair answers using the same standards that Sheikhawal would demand for the
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Quran, for all of the questions that he raises, and I believe that we can, then what is left of his argumentation, the
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Bible we have today is not the word of God. Now, the majority of Sheikhawal's time was taken noting the fact that the
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Quran is ashamed of the honesty of the Bible in its documenting the lives of sinful men in the past.
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First of all, it's assuming that only very righteous men would be chosen to be prophets. Where does that come from?
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That's not a biblical thing. That's not a biblical standard. Where does that come from? That's anachronistic.
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That's being read back into the text as saying, well, I just don't like that the Bible is honest in the fact that God deals with sinners.
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Well, you know something, folks? If He didn't deal with sinners, He wouldn't be dealing with any one of us. And I suggest to you that anyone who can look into his own heart and not see the thoughts of lust and violence and everything else that dwell in that heart, and recognize that people of old thankfully were used by God despite the fact that they encountered that kind of sin in their life, means that we're not looking very closely at our own hearts.
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All right? So, for example, David and Bathsheba.
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I find it fascinating. I just went through the Qur 'an again just over the past couple of weeks in preparation for this debate.
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I read through the Qur 'an again, and I always smile when I get to the part where the
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Qur 'an talks about David and Nathan. Did you know the Qur 'an talks about David and Nathan? Nathan comes to David.
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David repents. But in the Qur 'an, you have no earthy idea why. You don't know why. Nathan comes.
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It's clearly dependent upon the biblical story, but it's just taken out the reality of what
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David did. Now, Sheikha Wall says, I just don't think that's the word of God. Well, Sheikha Wall, I think it is. So how do we respond?
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We ask ourselves a question. If we both believe that Jesus was a prophet of God, and Christians all believe
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Jesus is a prophet of God, we just don't believe that he was merely Irazul. If Jesus was a prophet of God, did
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Jesus correct the Old Testament? Did Jesus come along and say, well, you know, what we have today really isn't what was originally written, all that terrible stuff about the prophets and Solomon and David and what happened?
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No. In fact, it's interesting. Most of the examples that Sheikha Wall took came from the book of Genesis. And yet it's that very book of Genesis that Jesus referred to when people came to him asking about marriage, and he specifically identified that book as the very words of God delivered through Moses.
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And he held men accountable for that. Now, we know exactly what was in the book of Genesis in the days of Jesus.
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We have the Dead Sea Scrolls. So Jesus, who you believe was a prophet, said the book of Genesis is the very word of God.
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And Sheikha Wall has just said, well, I don't like what's in the book of Genesis. Well, take that up with God and Jesus. It does not make it anything less than the word of God.
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Then we had, well, I don't like how Jesus treated the Syrophoenician woman. He called her a dog.
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No, he didn't. He quoted a standard Jewish proverb that she would have been well aware of to bring forth from her the very confession of faith that she brought forth.
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Jesus responded to her in such a way that by her persistence, she allowed that confession of faith to be made.
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And again, Jesus, how many times did Jesus refer to the faithfulness of people outside the people of Israel as an example of the faithlessness of the people of Israel?
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By the way, it is a gross misuse of the text of the New Testament to say that Jesus was only the
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Jewish Messiah. By taking one text where Jesus, during his ministry, sent his apostles only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, is to ignore that very same text going on to say that the disciples of Jesus Christ would go to all the world and preach the gospel to every nation.
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And that that gospel was for all the world. That is part and parcel of the biblical testimony.
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And then we had briefly toward the end a reference to God sending an angel to slay all of the men in the city.
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Yes, the Bible had said back in Deuteronomy 28, 29, in the curses and blessings that when the covenant people of God broke the covenant they made with God that this is what was going to happen.
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And even though God showed tremendous patience in sending prophet after prophet after prophet, finally the time of judgment came and it was a just judgment.
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How is that not the word of God? Is it not the case that the Quran says that all those who believe in the deity of Christ will go to hellfire?
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How is that the word of God and this isn't? Where is the consistency? That's what I want to know.
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Now, as I mentioned, if you're going to allege corruption in the text of the Bible, you need to go to the text of the
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Bible and not just assume it. Sheikha Wall says, well, I think this was put in later. Sheikha Wall, you have to prove that. We have these early manuscripts.
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Explain to us how editing could take place of these early manuscripts without showing evidence in the manuscript tradition.
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And what I've started to do ever since my debate with Shabir Ali at Biola University in 2006 has become my tradition.
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To give to my Islamic opponents in dialogue and debate a gift.
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And what I have here is the NET NA -27 Diglot. This is a critical edition of the
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Greek New Testament with all the textual data, the manuscripts in the back, the dating of the manuscripts, where they're found, what they contain.
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Everything is right here in one volume. And I would like to give this as a gift to Sheikha Wall. But now that you have it, you've got to use it.
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And so in the rest of our debate, I would like to say, if I were to say that certain elements of the
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Quranic text were later additions, it would be absolutely fair of you to demand
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I provide examples. Is that not to the Muslims in the audience? If I were to tell you that there are certain elements of the
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Quranic text that were added later, would you not be rightly, within your rights to say, give me evidence?
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For example, I put on the screen, I showed you the Fawqs Palimpsest manuscript of the Quran and the difference in its Ibn Masud reading with that of the
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Uthmanic reading. I gave you that material. And so my assertion to you is that if you are going to say, well, that's a later addition, you need to prove it.
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You need to provide the textual evidence. You need to answer the fundamental scholarly questions.
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That's how we engage in scholarly debate. That's what I hope we'll have the rest of this evening. Thank you very much. Thank you,
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Dr. White. Sheikh Awal, you may rebuttal for 12 minutes. Thank you very much,
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Dr. White, for the wonderful book that you've given me. And I will check it out.
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I take my word. I will look at it. OK, concerning certain talks that Dr.
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just made, that Uthman standardized the Quran. In other words, he's trying to allude to the fact that the
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Quran has so many variations and that we have different Qurans. Well, what happened really about Uthman, if the doctor would put the record straight, that in Islam, to burn
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Islamic artifacts, to burn the Quran, Arabic writing the
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Quran is common. We don't throw it away like that out of respect for the Quranic text.
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I burn Quran all the time. So if my books, my library get torn, I'm going to do with it.
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I'm not going to put cellotape. It's not going to hold. But the Quranic etiquette is to burn it. Burn it or you dig a hole and bury it.
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So what Uthman did by burning the Qurans to standardize them all, he put all the
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Quran became one. It is already in their mind. They cannot forget. They are good in memory, memorization.
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It is still a tradition of the Muslims today. We memorize to preserve our books because most of the people that were the first audience when
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Muhammad came, they were not, most of them are not literate. You know, most of them are illiterate.
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And so God Almighty has given them the ability to be able to memorize the Quran. And that is what the tradition of Islam have given us from the time of Muhammad up to today.
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Memorization is a key in Islam. And that is how the Quran was preserved. Now, when we talk about translation that we have
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Yusuf Ali, Dari Abadi, Ahmad Piktor. Well, these are translations.
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These are not the Quran as it is, like I said, the Quran given to Muhammad as it is in Arabic. That is the
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Quran that we call the word of God. Every other translation is not representing the actual word of God.
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It's translation. As each and every writer or any, you know, journalist have the right to translate the
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Quran from Arabic into any other language. You have that independent right to do that. But that doesn't mean what he wrote, it could be, you know, a translation, but not a version.
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But when we say a version, we mean certain, like I give you an example, the book of the Catholics. 73 books with 7 apocrypha.
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They call it a good book. You could say you don't believe in that. They say they don't believe in your own too.
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So, each and every one of you is claiming to have received that, you know, inspiration from God. They claim to have received true inspiration.
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It is part of the canon. You say it's not part of the canon. So, which spirit is actually, you know, motivating them to have it.
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So, do you write books through homework, by interviewing them?
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Now, I'm going to give you some of the reasons, the reason why we have doubts as to what the
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Bible holds to be the word of God. For example, in 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 9, you know, it says, it is this 2
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Timothy 4 verse 4 and 9 is actually a letter, not meant to be the word of God.
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If you analyze this word carefully, it is only a letter given to Timothy by Paul. Listen to what it says.
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It says, for example, he said, do your utmost best.
59:57
In other words, do diligently, oh Timothy, to come shortly unto me, Paul speaking to Timothy. He said, the clothes that I left at trials with Capus, when you are coming, please bring it with you, and the books also, and especially the parchment.
01:00:12
You can see clearly this is a letter that Paul is writing to Timothy. This is not inspired word of God.
01:00:18
This is a personal statement by Paul, and then eventually it crept into the text. It become the word of God.
01:00:23
Then we have, in 1
01:00:29
Corinthians chapter 9 verse 19, Paul said, I made myself a slave so that I might win more people.
01:00:37
I made myself a slave so that I might win more people into Christendom. To the Jew, I became a
01:00:43
Jew in order to win them. Now, to those under the law, I became under the law, though I am not under the law, that I might win them.
01:00:51
To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being without the law towards God, but under the law of Christ.
01:00:59
Now, as you read this script, definitely it tells you that Paul is imploring a technique, a cunning technique to win people into, why would you, why don't you give them the word as it is, give it straight to them, the word of God.
01:01:13
If that's the word of God, tell them straight ahead, but we don't believe in you becoming a
01:01:19
Jew. In other words, you have to lie to them, is that what it is? I'm not saying that, but that's how it sounds. To the
01:01:25
Gentile, I tried to become a Gentile so I would win them. To the Jew, now give them the word of God, let them decide if it's okay with them, not through this kind of lying.
01:01:36
Well, when Jesus said, like the doctor just brought it up, when Jesus said, go ye into all the nations, proving that Christ came for the whole of mankind.
01:01:43
Yes, he said, go ye into all the nations, but this nation is the 12 tribes of Israel. Because he said, you wouldn't have gone through all this nation until I come back to you.
01:01:53
In other words, before they were able to go through the dying tribe of Israel, he would have come back to them. And the disciples should be waiting still, up to now
01:02:01
Jesus didn't come. So he's not talking about the whole world, he's talking about the whole, I mean the nations of the tribe of Israel. If he came for the whole of mankind, definitely he has to show some example, go outside Israel and preach.
01:02:13
Right away, Muhammad has so many disciples, not from Arab, they have Persian, they have some people from Africa, they have the
01:02:19
Arabs. Different people to show that he came for the whole of mankind. But actually Christ came for the people of Israel.
01:02:24
And it is clearly stated in the book of Matthew chapter 10 verse 5. You know, these 12,
01:02:30
Jesus sent them and he commanded them by saying, go ye not into any way of the Gentiles, but go ye rather unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
01:02:39
For I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So in other words, the house of Israel, he sent only to the house of Israel.
01:02:48
Now if I want to know how did Jesus live with his wife? How am I going to know? He's limited to some capacity.
01:02:55
We believe in him, but he's limited. If he came for the whole of mankind, he should have married, then I would find inspiration.
01:03:01
How did he live with his children? I would do that. How did he live with his wife? I would do that. He didn't have the chance to become a king or a prophet like Muhammad did, like Moses did.
01:03:10
He didn't have the chance to do all of that. He's always in the hiding, meaning he's limited. So I cannot see how did
01:03:15
Jesus deal with the nations around him. How did he deal with them? How did he set up his government? I'm not going to learn all this from Jesus Christ.
01:03:22
Why? Because he's limited. That's why he mentioned in the book of John chapter 16 verse 7, John chapter 16 verse 12, that I have many things to tell you, but you can't understand it now.
01:03:31
However, when he, the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.
01:03:36
For he shall not speak from himself, but whatsoever shall he speak, so shall he be told. And he will declare unto you all things that are to come, and he will glorify me.
01:03:45
That's the physical human being he's talking about here. You could call him the Holy Spirit, you could say that, yes.
01:03:51
But if you analyze the verse carefully, it is a conditional clause there. If I don't go, he won't come.
01:03:57
It is expedient that I go away. If I don't go, he won't come. If I go, he will come. And you say it's the
01:04:02
Holy Spirit. And I'm saying the Spirit was there with him. When he said, when I send you to the mission of healing, it is not you that do the healing, it is the
01:04:10
Spirit in you. He said, receive ye the Holy Spirit. He said, I by the power of God, I by the
01:04:16
Spirit of God, the Spirit was there with him. But he's talking about the special spirit. It is expedient that I go away.
01:04:23
If I don't go, he won't come. Meaning that spirit is not there. If I go, he will come. And that answer to this can also be found in 1
01:04:31
John 4 verse 1. He said, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try them and see if they are of God.
01:04:39
Because there are so many false prophets who have gone out onto the way. The spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ came in flesh and he is the
01:04:49
Messiah, that spirit is the one we're talking about. That is the one that we should believe. And Muhammad asked us to believe.
01:04:55
Over 1 .6 billion Muslims on the face of the earth believe in Jesus. Believe that he is the
01:05:01
Messiah of God. We don't need any pastor or reverend to tell me that Christ is the
01:05:07
Messiah. We believe 100 % that he is the Messiah of God. And the Bible said that 1 John 4 verse 1 said that the prophet or the spirit who came, who come and tell you that Christ is a flesh, he came in flesh and that he is the
01:05:19
Messiah, that spirit or that prophet is from God. And Muhammad is from God because in this verse he used spirit and prophet synonymously.
01:05:30
Try the spirit and see if they are of God. Because there are so many false prophets. So a false prophet is a false spirit.
01:05:38
And a true prophet is a true spirit. Just like we see in the book of John chapter 3 verse 6.
01:05:44
When he talks about spirits, different spirits. So if you are here, if somebody told you, Dr. White and Muhammad Awal would be here, you know, jiving, you know, doing things and jumping.
01:05:55
Would you believe that? I don't think you would believe that because you would be saying, What do you mean these people are godly people? Why are they coming here and start jiving?
01:06:02
Now if that's what brought you here, that you are fleshy, you are here for fleshy, you know, motivation, you are motivated as a flesh.
01:06:09
But if you are here to receive the word of God, the language of the Bible is you are spirit. So this spirit of truth is a physical human being.
01:06:16
Like I said, if you go to Mecca today, in Medina, where Muhammad's tomb was there. It says, There is no deity worth of worship but one and God Almighty alone.
01:06:30
And that Muhammad who is a true prophet, spirited. This epitaph was given to him by the
01:06:36
Arabs long before he became a messenger of God Almighty. Long before. So the spirit of truth is actually talking about Muhammad.
01:06:42
If you say it's not Muhammad, then it means this passage, there is contradiction in this passage again.
01:06:48
And I don't know how you would reconcile this. And then the doctor mentioned about that in Islam, there is one verse in the
01:07:01
Quran, No, you know, like may petition be on those who call
01:07:11
Jesus the son of God. He is only a messenger of God. And that the only sin that God doesn't forgive you in Islam is shirk.
01:07:20
Associating partners with God Almighty. To associate partner with God Almighty, you would not be forgiven.
01:07:25
But if you repent before you die, you are forgiven. In Islam, we don't, you know,
01:07:30
Jesus cannot be like his God at the same time, the son of God at the same time. He is a flesh
01:07:36
God at the same time. We want a clear cut monotheism. Clear monotheism,
01:07:41
Islam. The moment you begin to divide God, you know, he loses that kind of essence of godliness.
01:07:48
The first commandment, And that is exactly what Muslims said. That is exactly what
01:07:54
Jesus said. Jesus didn't come with any new doctrine. He came to follow the laws of Moses and the other prophets.
01:08:01
And if you say he didn't follow that, then that means there is contradiction. Then that means we find contradiction in the
01:08:06
Bible. Why do I have to say that? Book of Matthew 5 .17 He said,
01:08:12
Do not think that I have come to destroy the law of Moses and the prophets. I have come to fulfill. And whosoever do the law of Moses and teach someone so will become great in the kingdom of God.
01:08:22
But whosoever cancel the law of Moses and teach someone how to cancel it will become least. In other words, he came to fulfill.
01:08:29
And that fulfillment is written large. Where do we find that? Again, in the book of Jeremiah chapter 18 verse 20.
01:08:35
When Jeremiah said, you know, no one will die for you. Whatever you do is what you're going to get.
01:08:43
Thank you very much, Sheikh. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will now take a five minute intermission.
01:08:52
If you could please exit out the sides if you're sitting in front of the camera so as not to disturb the recording equipment.
01:08:59
And when you return to your seats, please come up the outside aisles as well. Thank you very much. As Sahih al -Bukhari records for us, was found with only one man.
01:09:19
Only one man remembered a portion of Surah al -Tawbah. Why is that? I would refer you to the apocryphal debates that I've done with representatives of the
01:09:26
Roman Catholic faith in regards to that particular issue. We have a fundamental disagreement with our
01:09:32
Muslim friends as to what constitutes the word of God. We have absolutely no problem whatsoever that an epistle written by Paul to Timothy is the word of God, including the personal elements in it.
01:09:46
God has always communicated with his people in their lives. There's all sorts of personal stuff in the
01:09:52
Psalms. There's all sorts of things the psalmist is experiencing joy or despair. And God has always communicated that way.
01:09:58
And again, the prophet Jesus accepted those things as the word of God. Where is the consistency in the standard here?
01:10:06
Then we have the allegation that Paul was being deceptive. That he was lying to people because of his willingness to limit his own personal freedom so as to promulgate the gospel.
01:10:15
That's not deception. That's being a servant of the gospel. That's being willing to sacrifice freedoms that you have so as to not provide a stumbling block to somebody else to hear the gospel.
01:10:25
That's all it is. It has nothing to do with whether that is the word of God or not. Then Sheikha Wall said something very odd.
01:10:32
He said that when Jesus said, go in all the nations, that the nations is a nation, the 12 tribes of Israel.
01:10:38
No, that is not even slightly substantiatable from the text. Look at Matthew chapter 28.
01:10:44
And there Jesus' words are pan ta ta ethne. All the nations which any
01:10:51
Jewish reader. I challenge Sheikha Wall to show me one example from any contemporaneous source where that phraseology is used of only the people of Israel.
01:10:59
The ethne are the people outside of Israel. I don't know of any biblical scholar that would substantiate the reading that Sheikha Wall gave of that text in any way.
01:11:09
He said Jesus did not become a king. Oh, yes, he did. And the fact that we are sitting here this evening 2000 years later as subjects and servants of his kingdom demonstrates that he did.
01:11:20
But as he said to Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world. He is the king in the heart of every single person who's bowed the knee to his name and called him
01:11:29
Lord. I would love to do an entire debate on the assertion that the parakletos, the paraclete of John 14 and 16 is
01:11:39
Muhammad. It is impossible. The promise is that the Holy Spirit would be in those disciples, not somebody 600 years later.
01:11:48
If you want to create a massive contradiction in the text, then try to turn the
01:11:53
Holy Spirit and the immediate fulfillment of that promise and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit after the sun returns to heaven.
01:11:59
Try to turn that into a prophecy of Muhammad. There you can really turn the Bible on its head.
01:12:05
Then we had a quotation from 1 John saying, hey, Muhammad, Muhammad led people to believe in Jesus, not the
01:12:11
Jesus of 1 John. The Jesus of 1 John is the divine son of God, the creator of all things, who died upon Calvary's tree and rose again the third day for our sins.
01:12:22
Muhammad says he's not the son of God. Sir, Dali class, the third Isis, let me yell at while I'm yelled at.
01:12:28
He does not beget nor is he begotten and Sir for 157 denies the crucifixion.
01:12:35
And so unfortunately, Muhammad is described perfectly in the Bible in 1
01:12:40
John as an anti Christ. One who stands against the Christian faith, not one who is leading people to believe in Jesus.
01:12:49
Then it is interesting to note that sheikha wall said, well, I don't believe the Bible's word of God because God repents in it.
01:12:55
In Surah 237 Allah repents in the Quran. So why isn't that the word of God? We have to have consistency in the standards.
01:13:04
See what I've been doing now for a number of years and debating Islamic leaders is looking for the consistent Muslim. The Muslim that will use the same standards for the
01:13:12
Quran as they use for the New Testament. And so far I have not found that person, but I'm going to keep searching and keep doing these debates till I find that person.
01:13:21
Thank you very much. Thank you,
01:13:26
Dr. White. Sheikh, you may offer another five minute rebuttal. All right.
01:13:34
Dr. White just mentioned something that is so foreign, so new to me. You know,
01:13:40
I've read the Quran many, many times and I haven't seen somewhere in the
01:13:45
Quran where God repented. That is, I don't know, man. You might want to show it to me.
01:13:52
John chapter one verse one. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and it become flesh and this and that.
01:13:58
Well, if you say in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, we don't have any problem.
01:14:05
But when you say the word becomes God and the word is God's, if you take away the
01:14:12
S, Islam will accept it. Because all the words that come is from God Almighty. Like in Genesis, you know, let there be this, let there be light.
01:14:22
These are the words of God. But these words are His, but how can His words become physical human?
01:14:29
Like in my DVDs, in my series, in my audios, I have my talks. These talks are not mine, they are my words.
01:14:37
So the word of Allah is separate from Allah Himself. So how could you call the words that I have made and put in the cassette tape or videotape,
01:14:46
I am that word? We don't accept that in the Quran. Again, yes, doctor, we believe that John 14 -16 and John 16 -7 and John 16 -12 and 1st
01:14:59
John chapter 4 verse 1 all belongs to Muhammad. We believe that. We also believe in, you know, John chapter 1 verse 19 when this, you know, people,
01:15:06
Levi and the scribes came to ask John the Baptist, you know, if you are the prophet, I mean if you are the
01:15:12
Christ, he said no. If you are Elisha, he said no. If you are not
01:15:17
Elisha, you are not that prophet, who are you? Are you that prophet? So we say that prophet is Muhammad. That is another topic again, which
01:15:24
I cannot expound right now. Well, when I'm talking about, I say Jesus Christ is not a king.
01:15:30
He wasn't a king. I don't mean like, you know, a title king.
01:15:35
Yes, you call him a king, mashallah, we don't have any problem with that. But I say Christ says He did not come for the whole of mankind.
01:15:41
He didn't establish himself like, I'm the king, I have my ministers, these are my court, like David did, like Solomon did.
01:15:49
He never did all these things. It is just a title. He's a king of Israel. We don't have, Islam don't have any problem with Jesus at all.
01:15:57
But then, we say, well, you don't believe in Jesus because you don't believe that He died. The Quran says He died. The Quran chapter 4 says, which
01:16:03
He quoted, They did not kill Him. They did not crucify Him. That's what we believe. He wasn't killed and He wasn't crucified.
01:16:09
The Quran went on to say, which He didn't quote, It was made to appear to them so.
01:16:16
Why was it made to appear to them so? Because those who write the book are full of doubts. Who?
01:16:21
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They are the ones that write about Christ's crucifixion, about His death and everything. The Quran says,
01:16:27
They don't have the exact knowledge of what happened. Why? Because They only follow conjecture.
01:16:33
Because when they went to the upper room, they didn't know what happened. When they came to arrest them, they didn't know what happened. So they went to the upper room.
01:16:39
They ran away. So Christ came to the upper room and He said, In Hebrew, Instead of them to say, They were afraid and terrified.
01:16:47
He said, Why do thoughts arise in your heart and mind? It is I, Myself. Why thoughts arise in your heart and mind?
01:16:54
It is I, Myself. Handle me and see. For a spirit, meaning any spirit, For a spirit have no flesh and bones.
01:17:01
As you see me have. And they touched Him and felt Him. And they were overjoyed. Now they believe it is He Himself. Because at the back of their mind,
01:17:07
Anyone that died and came out must be spiritually alive. You could see the form, but you cannot touch it.
01:17:15
You cannot grasp it. But you could see the form instantaneously. Like a silhouette. So they were surprised.
01:17:21
But when He said, Touch me and see. For a spirit have no flesh and bones. That's what we are talking about. That Christ definitely did not die on the cross.
01:17:29
Again, like you said, It's a different topic. We can arrange for that. I'm all for it. Crucifixion, fact or fiction,
01:17:35
Or any of that topic. We can talk about that. Again, I'm sold on my gun. When Jesus said,
01:17:40
Go into all the nations. It is so clearly stated. Otherwise, I would call that a contradiction.
01:17:48
Why did I say that? Because didn't He tell them, Don't go to anywhere. Do not go to the city of the Samaritans. Nor the
01:17:54
Gentiles. But go in, rather, Unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
01:17:59
For I am not sent but unto the lost of Israel. How many times He said that? How many times He mentioned that?
01:18:05
Then all of a sudden, We hear Him going into all... They try to make it look like Going into all the world.
01:18:11
Going into all the nations. And on and on. And baptized in the name of... No, this is not what it is. It is actually...
01:18:17
He was actually sent for the people of Israel. And that is exactly what
01:18:22
Jesus came to do. Thank you, Sheikh Awad.
01:18:28
Alright, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. White will now offer 15 minutes of cross -examination.
01:18:40
Alright, thank you very much, Sheikh Awad. My question, immediately,
01:18:45
I want to follow up with what you were just saying. Can you give us any historical use Of the phrase,
01:18:51
Pantata ethne, Unto all the nations. That would substantiate your usage
01:18:57
That that is referring to going to the Jewish people. Okay, Dr. White.
01:19:04
See, you could use flower words and everything, But what I'm trying to tell you is this. That Christ, when he came to this world,
01:19:14
He was sent specific. He came with a message. And that message is specific for the
01:19:19
Bani Israel. For the children of Israel, as the Quran mentioned. And the Bible supported that.
01:19:24
That he came for the Israelites alone. And his doing, as he walked on earth, All his doing and education,
01:19:30
Didn't show that he came for the whole of mankind. So you can't give us any references That substantiate that interpretation.
01:19:35
Well, Matthew 10, 5, Says that he came for the 12 tribes of Israel. Right, but that's a different question, sir.
01:19:41
Can you find any use of Pantata ethne, The nations, In any Jewish source,
01:19:47
Contemporary to the New Testament, That means the Jews. So if Jesus said, Going into all the nations,
01:19:52
All what he was saying, like I said, Is going into the nation of Israel. Because if we use that And put it together with Matthew 10, 5,
01:20:00
It makes sense. Okay, so your assumption then is That Matthew 10 is for all time,
01:20:07
Even though Matthew himself Then provides the later statement That they are to go into all the nations
01:20:14
And baptize them. And you can't give us any interpretation of that That is other than how Christians understood it.
01:20:19
Well, if we believe in that verse That you just said, That Matthew said, Going into all the nations,
01:20:25
I mean, going into all the world, Then that means we have contradiction. Because he told them clearly, Do not go to the Gentiles.
01:20:31
So if he said, How could I, How could all of a sudden somebody say, Go to all the nations? He said, You came for the Israelites alone. You just said that all the disciples
01:20:37
Were in the upper rooms, They didn't know what happened. Why do you reject John's testimony That he was at the foot of the cross? Well, the book of Mark, Chapter 14, verse 50,
01:20:46
Said, During the most critical time Of the life of Christ, All his disciples forsook him and fled. All his disciples forsook him and fled.
01:20:53
So why couldn't John go back As John says he did? Well, the Bible didn't say all. Mark said, All his disciples forsook him and fled.
01:21:00
Okay, so if we all fled this room, None of us could ever come back. Well, the Bible, Well, it didn't say that.
01:21:06
It does. John said that he was at the foot of the cross, That he had fled, And he was at the foot of the cross.
01:21:11
Why can't both of those be true statements? Right. The Bible mentions so many Johns. We have some say that the apostle
01:21:17
John, The one that Jesus loved, Or the other one who's not an apostle. How many Johns do we have
01:21:23
Who are the disciples of Jesus? So we don't know which John actually, Is it this John who is the disciple of Jesus, Or some other
01:21:29
John? We don't know that. We don't know that. So when John himself says he was at the foot of the cross, Quotes what happens,
01:21:35
And then speaks in the resurrection narratives, As being in the upper room,
01:21:40
You just reject his testimony, Or you're just not familiar with his testimony? No, Dr. White, Because in the last phrase of the book of John, It says,
01:21:49
We believe in this gospel, Because we believe in the apostle who wrote it. In other words,
01:21:55
It is not that John that you are thinking, Or somebody's thinking, It is not that John who is actually,
01:22:02
May not have been the one that's supposed to have gone into the cross and see. It's somebody else that's talking about the
01:22:07
John. So I don't know who John you're talking about. Well, you just quoted from John 1, 1, But you did not quote it correctly.
01:22:14
It says, In the beginning was the Word, And the Word was with God, And the Word was God. Then I think you skipped down to verse 14,
01:22:20
Where it said, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But then you said, The Word is
01:22:25
God's, And if you would take off the S, We'd accept it. Where do you find
01:22:31
God's in John 1? Yeah. In the beginning, And the Word became flesh,
01:22:37
And the Word was God's. Isn't that the question? No. And the Word was God's. Those were,
01:22:43
Is it not in your book? No, it's not. No, Kaiseos Einhalag, Einhalagos means,
01:22:49
And the Word was God. It's describing the nature of the Lagos. Okay, And the Word, I turned upside down.
01:22:55
And the Word was God. That is what we don't believe in. If it is the Word was God's, Excuse me, That's what we believe in.
01:23:00
God's with an apostrophe S. Yeah, At least all the words was God's. I see. Kul, You know what
01:23:07
Kul is saying. All the words of God said is God's. So we believe in that one. So, The question I would have is, Why do you believe
01:23:13
John 14, 26, And apply it to Muhammad, While you reject John 1, 1, Simply because you reject his theology?
01:23:19
Well, Because the Quran tells us that, In the Bible, We have the Word of God. In the Bible, We have the spoken word of the prophet.
01:23:25
In the Bible, We have the word of the historians. In the Bible, We have the word of, You know,
01:23:30
Other types of literature, Also in the Bible. So, As we are trained in the Quran, If we hear the word of God, We know this word is from God Almighty.
01:23:38
Why is that not anachronistic? Why is that not looking backwards? In other words, This text,
01:23:46
John 1, 1, Existed 600 years prior to Muhammad. And I am told,
01:23:54
As a member of the Al -Anjil, In Surah 5, To judge by what is contained therein.
01:24:02
Why should I not judge Muhammad, By John 1, 1, And find that his teaching is lacking?
01:24:10
Yes, The Quran also asks us, Look, I'll look it up. Anytime they come with anything,
01:24:15
Ask them, Tell them to look into their books. Because there is light in their book.
01:24:20
We are not rejecting the whole word of Jesus, The whole New Testament. We are not rejecting that all. We believe there is a word of God inside.
01:24:26
We also believe that there are certain words that are not in there. So, we have to pick and choose. We have to see. We have to see and see,
01:24:32
Which one is the word of God, Which one is not the word of God. Dr. Sheikh, If you were standing in the group,
01:24:40
That was there the first day, When Muhammad recited, Surah 5, 44 through 48 approximately.
01:24:47
Surah Ta -Mine. And you heard him say, O People of the
01:24:53
Book, Judge, I'm sorry, People of the Gospel, Judge by what is contained therein.
01:24:59
Do you believe that we know, Exactly what the Injil contained, Ten years before Muhammad was born?
01:25:08
Mr. White, All I know, You know, The word of Allah, In the
01:25:14
Quran, Is too straightforward. Like I said again, We believe in the word that God gave to Jesus.
01:25:20
The Quran also said, The books have been changed. Where does the Quran say that? It's in the
01:25:27
Quran. Where does the Quran say that? فَوَإِنُّ الَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونَ الْكِتَابَ بِأَيْدِهِمْ ثُمَّ يَقُولُونَ هَذَا مِنْ إِنْ دِ اللَّهِ
01:25:34
What do you think that has to do with the Christian scriptures, sir? Of course. Woe unto those who write the books with their own hand.
01:25:41
And then they say, It's from Allah. Right. What does that have to do with the Injil and the Torah, Which were not saw,
01:25:46
They were sent down by God. This word, Mr. White is talking about, Woe unto those who write the books with their own hand.
01:25:52
What is the Quran? The Quran is talking about the Jews and the Christians. So God said, Woe unto those who write the books with their own hands,
01:25:57
So that they will sell it and make a benefit out of it. So this is referring to the Quran and the
01:26:04
Injil and the Torah. So the Quran tells me to judge by what's in the
01:26:09
Injil, But then the Quran tells me that the Injil has been corrupted at the same time. How am I supposed to judge? Well, the Quran also says,
01:26:15
We sent down, Let me explain with Arabic. We sent down the book to you, O Muhammad, in truth,
01:26:21
Confirming the books that came before it. The Quran is here to confirm. In other words, The Quran is,
01:26:27
It's the watcher over guiding other books into safety. Meaning, if you see any word that is not considered with the
01:26:32
Quran, Then that is not from Allah. Can you show me any pre -Quranic use of Muhammad that says, Corrector rather than guarder?
01:26:39
Look, like I said, Yes. It's a watcher. Some translators say,
01:26:46
Guiding. Some translators, Watcher. How about a not corrector? Can you show me any evidence that means to correct or change?
01:26:52
That is why I say, The Quran, Arabic, Which we have, You could, It is,
01:26:58
Quran, One word can give you so many, Like, To read, To recite, To proclaim, To repeat.
01:27:04
It makes all the senses. So, Some use it, A watcher. Some say, A guide.
01:27:10
Some say, It is to guide other books into safety, Because they are not safe. Some words have crept in.
01:27:16
So, The Quran is guiding other books into safety. I understand that, But you cannot provide me with lexical,
01:27:22
Lame Arabic lexicon. I have it, You have it, I would assume. Does it give you a pre -Quranic use of Muhammad, That means correct?
01:27:29
I didn't bring my lexical Arabic into English, I didn't bring it here.
01:27:34
No, I have it on my computer, But other than that, But you're not familiar with it, Right? Alright, that's fine.
01:27:41
Okay, that's fine. I did want to ask you a question. Why was it that in,
01:27:46
Sahih Al -Bukhari 6519510, The concern that was expressed to Abu Bakr, After the battle of Yamama, Was that a large portion of the
01:27:57
Quran, Could be lost. I believe the term there is kathir. A large portion of the Quran could be lost, If they did not act to collect it from,
01:28:05
Palm stalks, White stones, And the memory of the Quran. Is that not correct? Yes, I believe it's right.
01:28:11
Okay. Why would there be a fear, Of the loss of a large portion of the
01:28:16
Quran, If in fact, It already had been memorized, By a large number of people, Especially in light,
01:28:22
Of the fact that, That same portion of Sahih Al -Bukhari, Specifically says that, At least one ayah,
01:28:28
Of Surah Al -Tawbah, Was only found with one man. I think it was Kazami Al -Ansari, If I recall correctly.
01:28:33
That's right. Okay. After the battle of Yamama, There is a lot of Muslims, Most of them have memorized the
01:28:42
Quran. Some is written on the shoulder blade of an animal, The scapular blade, You know, the skin, You know, low lasting quality material.
01:28:49
Now, when they realize that, The Khufas, Those who commit the
01:28:55
Quran to memory, Are dying through wars. They didn't say they all died, Are dying. They realize that.
01:29:01
So look, Why don't we preserve it right away, Because if we allow ourselves, For all these Khufas to be,
01:29:06
You know, Eventually might have been killed in the war, We would lose the Quran. These are the Khufas. Some of them were killed,
01:29:12
But those who were alive, They are the ones that were charged, To preserve the Quran. Right.
01:29:19
So, but why was there a fear, That a large portion of it could be lost, If it was already in existence? That is the fear.
01:29:24
No. It's in their memory. Like I said, It's in their memory, They memorized the Quran. There is that fear, That if the war keep going,
01:29:31
They would, We would lose a large chunk of the Quran. So the best thing to do right now, Is to preserve it.
01:29:37
And that is where Usman came in, You know, Eventually the Zayd, You know, They put it together. And Zayd, It's not like he's the only one,
01:29:44
That have the Quran in memory. He was charged with that only. Allah, The messenger could have chosen anyone,
01:29:49
But he chose, You know, Zayd. Could you comment briefly, On the statement of Ibn Abi Dawud, In Kitab al -Masahif,
01:29:57
Page 23, Where he says, Many of the passages of the Quran, That were sent down, Were known by those, Who died in the day of Yamama. But they were not known,
01:30:03
By those who survived them, Nor were they written down, Nor had Abu Bakr, Umar, Or Usman, By that time, Collected the Quran, Nor were they found,
01:30:10
With even one person after them. Could you comment on that statement? Well, Zayd, We know,
01:30:17
Zayd is Ufaz, And he memorized the Quran in total. We know, Sayyidina Ali, Also memorized the
01:30:23
Quran. Usman himself, Is a person, Who memorized the Quran. So, There is no fear,
01:30:28
Ibn Mas 'ud, Ibn Mas 'ud, Is also someone, Who memorized the Quran. And so, These people,
01:30:35
They are like, The four runners of the, So to speak, People who can actually, Preserve the Quran.
01:30:40
But Ibn Mas 'ud was alive. Zayd was alive. Usman was alive. And they have the Quran in memory.
01:30:46
So, The fear of Quran being lost, Actually is there. So, Let's put it together. Otherwise, It won't happen.
01:30:51
But there are still people, Who have the Quran memorized. And so, That fear really is just, They panic,
01:30:57
But they can still, Preserve the Quran. Going back to, One of your statements, You seem to have a problem,
01:31:02
With the idea that, Jesus was born, From a line of sinners. Which of course, From a Christian perspective, Since all have sinned,
01:31:07
That would sort of be necessary. Isn't it true, That Muhammad's father, Was a Kafir, That Allah, Refused to allow him,
01:31:14
To pray for him, Because he died on Shirk? He was a Mushrikeen? Well, I was surprised,
01:31:20
That you didn't even say, His name is Abdullah. You know, So how come, That was the argument. How come,
01:31:26
Abdullah is a Kafir? Abdullah is the servant of Allah. And that's Muhammad's name. So, You know, Then that means,
01:31:31
They are worshipping Allah. Some people make it look like Allah. The Arab Christians are here, And they know,
01:31:37
They know, They know the word Allah. Allah is there. The word Allah is being, It's used with them, And they know.
01:31:42
That wasn't my question. My question was, If you have a problem, With Jesus' progenitors, Having engaged in sin, And yet,
01:31:48
Muhammad's own father, Was a Mushrikeen, That Allah, Forbid him to pray for him.
01:31:55
No. Are you using the same statement, For your own faith, That you're using for the Christian faith? You know,
01:32:02
The Arabs, At the time of Muhammad, Before the Quran started coming to him, They know about God Almighty.
01:32:08
They know about God Almighty. They know that God existed. They worshipped the God of Abraham also. So they know who is
01:32:13
Allah. They know who is Abd. It is all part and parcel of their language. So, These people,
01:32:19
Have, You know, They are deviating. It's like the Jews. It's the history of the Jews also.
01:32:24
Eventually, They've been going away, And God will send them a new messenger, To bring them back to land, And on and on and on.
01:32:30
But his father, Actually, Wasn't like, I'm a Muslim, Muhammad taught Islam.
01:32:36
Islam came after his father. And they fall into the category, Only Allah will judge them. Most of the Muslims say, Only Allah will judge these people.
01:32:42
One last question here, In the last minute. You have often said, The Council of Nicaea, Had something to do, With the canon of scripture.
01:32:48
Can you give me anything, From the Council of Nicaea, To substantiate that assertion? Well, We know according to, You know,
01:32:54
The readings, And the, You know, Research that we made, We believe that,
01:33:00
In 325 A .D., King Constantine, Invited, Athanasius, And Arius, And this,
01:33:10
And you know, Among other, But sir, Athanasius wasn't a bishop in 325, He became a bishop in 328, He was a deacon in 325,
01:33:16
He was not invited by Constantine. So, So your historical source is what? Some argument, Some argue that,
01:33:22
He was, Who? He was there. Who? Well, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, In, We find in Luke chapter 2, verse 21, where when he was eight days old,
01:34:27
Christ, he was circumcised and named by the angel Jesus. And yet we find in the book of Galatians chapter 5, verse 2,
01:34:34
Paul is saying that, but I, Paul, I'm telling you, whosoever is circumcised will not, you know, will fall down from grace.
01:34:40
How could that be? Jesus Christ is circumcised. All the prophets were circumcised. Jesus Christ is circumcised following the law of Moses.
01:34:46
How come, you know, Paul actually cancelled the circumcision? Why would he do that? It's a simple matter of context.
01:34:55
It's allowing context to stand. Jesus was a Jew born under the law and therefore he was circumcised.
01:35:01
In the book of Galatians, Paul is talking about the fact that under the new covenant, circumcision avails nothing in obtaining the grace of God.
01:35:09
And that it is not required for Gentiles to become Jews to experience the grace of God. Therefore, when the
01:35:15
Judaizers were coming along and contradicting the apostolic teaching of faith in Jesus Christ and saying, no, faith in Christ is not enough.
01:35:22
You first have to be circumcised, enter into the covenant people of the Old Testament before you can then experience the
01:35:27
New Testament. That is what Paul is saying. And his specific teaching is that circumcision has been fulfilled in regeneration, in the spirit coming and regenerating us and making us new creatures in Jesus Christ.
01:35:40
It's a simple matter of allowing Paul to speak for Paul, sir. You have misrepresented him many, many times in your public talks that I've listened to on that subject.
01:35:47
I would highly recommend that you read Paul more closely. Well, Mr. White, well, that is your assumption because we found
01:35:55
Jesus Christ, based on what you just said, Matthew 5, 17. He said, do not think that I've come to destroy the law of Moses and the prophet.
01:36:01
I've come to fulfill. So to fulfill is to do it and to teach those who will come after him to do it. No, sir.
01:36:07
You've completely misunderstood the meaning of fulfill as Jesus himself defined it. He didn't cancel it.
01:36:12
He came to fulfill it. And if he fulfilled it, his followers should follow it too. So how come, you know?
01:36:18
Sir, you've completely missed not only the message of Matthew, but the message of Jesus being recorded by Matthew.
01:36:24
When Matthew 5, 17 says he's not come to destroy, he's come to fulfill. What does it mean to fulfill? What does it mean to complete that?
01:36:31
The entire message of the New Testament is that Jesus has fulfilled all righteousness. He has fulfilled the righteousness that you and I could not fulfill in our place.
01:36:42
And that is why when we are united with him, we have a perfect righteousness that we could never have of our own.
01:36:47
So I just allow Matthew to speak for Matthew. I do not arbitrarily cut him off. That is your interpretation.
01:36:54
Well, but you're giving your interpretation and your interpretation is not derived from the text. It's derived from the
01:36:59
Quran. I'm only saying what he said. He himself. He said, do not think, look at the words carefully, that I have come to destroy.
01:37:06
In other words, I've come to fulfill. I'm not come to tell you don't do the law of Moses. What happened in Matthew 19, 16?
01:37:12
A man came to Christ. He's a good master. What good thing must I do to enter eternal life? And what did he say?
01:37:18
Why do you call me good for? The only one that is good is the Father. But if you want to enter... He does not say the Father, sir. He says there is only one who is good.
01:37:24
You have misquoted that a number of times. No, it's not misquoted. I'm just, you know... No, because Jesus is pointing out that he doesn't know who he's dealing with.
01:37:31
This is a description of deity to Jesus that you're missing. So he asked them, the only one that is good is the
01:37:38
Father in heaven. He does not say the only one as good as the Father in heaven, sir. What did he say? There is only one who is good.
01:37:44
That is good. Well, it's the same thing because... No, it's not the same thing because he's identifying himself as being good, sir.
01:37:53
No, no, no, no, no. The only one that is good is the Father in heaven. In other words, he's rejecting that goodness. So you're having to add words to the text.
01:38:00
No, no, no. Even though he is good. We know Christ is good. We know he's good to the letter. But he's saying it out of fear of God, you know, humble, humility.
01:38:08
And then he said the only way that you would get to eternal life is to fulfill the law and the commandment. Didn't he say that?
01:38:14
No, he did not. No, he did not, sir. I have never heard you... Didn't he say... I have never heard you... What did he say?
01:38:20
I have never heard you accurately represent that story. Because every time you have told the story, you stop before the end of the encounter.
01:38:27
At the end of the encounter, the man says, I've done all these things from my youth up. And Jesus' response is, one thing you lack.
01:38:34
Sell all that you possess and what? And what, Sheikh Awal? Come, follow me.
01:38:41
I understand that part. Is that the Mosaic Law, sir? Yes, it's... Where does the Mosaic Law say to sell all you possess?
01:38:51
Didn't he say that one first? He said that. So how is it? The Lord, our God, the Lord is one.
01:38:56
If you want to do that, and then, you know, He has found some of the
01:39:02
Ten Commandments. You are actually connecting two different stories together, but it doesn't matter. Actually, what he was teaching there, no matter how you try to dress it, he's teaching that you have to follow the law of Moses.
01:39:13
No, he's not, sir. What is he saying? He is pointing out that this man who has come to him, who said he has fulfilled that law, had not fulfilled that law, because he then says, one thing you lack.
01:39:26
And he identifies the fact that this man has idols, his personal possessions.
01:39:31
So when he says, sell all that you have, he's demonstrating that while he thought he had fulfilled the second half of the
01:39:37
Decalogue, he had actually violated the first half. He was committing shirk. He had idols.
01:39:43
They were his possessions. And Jesus identified the fact that he was self -righteous. You simply missed that text every time you used it, sir.
01:39:50
No, I didn't, Mr. White. It is just a matter of principle, because Christ is telling them plain and simple statement that the only way you get to heaven is to follow the law of Moses.
01:39:58
Did he say the law of Moses in that text? Well, you don't have to come and see the law of Moses, but what he was telling him to do is to, you know, follow the
01:40:05
Ten Commandments of Moses. No, that's not what he said, sir. I just asked the audience, read the text.
01:40:12
I think it's very plain. When Christ says, Shema Yisrael, he or Israel, the Lord, isn't it the first commandment?
01:40:17
Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh Elohim. So how could Jesus pick one commandment and leave the rest of the commandments?
01:40:23
If you follow one commandment, you have to follow the whole commandment. Actually, he said that there were two. The two greatest commandments. The first commandment is to Shema, then love your neighbor as yourself.
01:40:30
And he said that those summarize the law. That's fine. Which one of us has ever done that perfectly?
01:40:36
That's why we need a savior, sir. No, which savior? Someone to die for us? Is that what you mean?
01:40:42
Yes, sir. Well, but the book of Ezekiel didn't say that. Who Jesus came to fulfill. Actually, in the book of Ezekiel, you've also misrepresented repeatedly because you ignore the fact that the saying that Ezekiel 18 is referring to is the fact that the people of Israel are saying, we don't need to repent because of that saying, the fathers eat sour grapes and our teeth have been set on edge.
01:41:04
So they're saying, look, we're suffering because of what our parents did. There's no reason for us to repent. And Ezekiel says to them, no, if you will do righteousness, you will be accepted of God.
01:41:12
If you do sin, you'll be. That's all Ezekiel is dealing with. You ignore the fact that Ezekiel comes after the mosaic law that gave us the sacrifices, which point to their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
01:41:23
You're cutting the Bible up. Shake, shake away. No, Mr. White, but this law and the commandment that Jesus Christ have fulfilled, including circumcision, which we find people have canceled it.
01:41:36
Now you try to make it look like, okay, Paul, it's okay to cancel it. Paul have canceled so many things who Jesus Christ said, do not cancel.
01:41:42
And he canceled that. And the book of Genesis 17 talks about this circumcision is very important in the, in the, in the
01:41:47
Hebraic law. And Jesus did it. All of them did it. So how come nobody who's supposed to follow
01:41:52
Jesus do it? Paul have canceled it. Because we, we accept, we accept the fact that interestingly enough, early
01:41:58
Muslims also believed that Bulus was sent by God. Ibn Kathir tells us that in the interpretation of Surah 37, there were early
01:42:06
Muslims who recognized and believed that the three messengers sent to the city there in that Surah.
01:42:13
One of them was Bulus who was Paul. I'm not trying to argue that point. The point is that this later attack upon Paul is not represented in the
01:42:22
Quran. Where does the Quran ever say anything about the apostle Paul? Where does the, where does the
01:42:27
Hadith ever tell you that the apostle Paul was a false teacher who promoted? Sure. No, in the
01:42:33
Quran, we were told that the gospel was given to Jesus himself. The gospel was given to Jesus.
01:42:39
The Quran didn't tell the gospel was given to Paul. So when Jesus says something, we measure it by what
01:42:44
Paul said. Now, if you analyze it closely, you can see that what Jesus said is different and what Paul said is different.
01:42:50
I totally disagree. I totally disagree. Well, totally disagree. I do not believe that there are any substantiate from any meaningful interpretation.
01:42:57
That would use the same standard you use in interpreting the Quran, in interpreting the
01:43:03
New Testament. You don't allow for those same standards. Inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. Okay, Mr.
01:43:10
White, would you like to comment on this verse like John chapter 5 verse 4? That's the King James Version. It says this whole verse was expunged from the
01:43:18
Revised Standard Version. John chapter 5 verse 4 is part of a major textual variant.
01:43:23
It is not found in any of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament, which is why it is noted in all critical editions of the
01:43:31
Greek New Testament, including the one sitting to your right -hand side, and is recognized as a later edition.
01:43:39
So that's why there is a lot of discrepancy in the King James Version. The King James Version was based upon the
01:43:45
Textus Receptus, which was the work of Desiderius Erastus beginning in 1516. In fact, the King James was based upon seven primary
01:43:52
Greek texts. The five editions of Erasmus, the 1555 of Stephanus, and the 1598 of Baza. However, all of those were based upon about six manuscripts.
01:43:59
Our manuscripts today are many more than were available to them at that particular period in time. So would you say that, you know, it is in error that it contained this 5 -4, you know, this book,
01:44:12
John, that it doesn't contain, it's not in the NIV? Well, it's a shame that you didn't read my book, The King James Only Controversy, which goes well into depth on all of these issues.
01:44:20
But I would identify John 5 -4 as a later edition. The only reason
01:44:26
I wouldn't use the term error for the King James at that point is that they simply were not aware of this data.
01:44:31
There's a vast difference between being ignorant of something because your sources are not sufficient to do that, and then making the wrong decision when you actually have the data in front of you.
01:44:41
So, you know, well, it's in the King James Version. So, in other words, the King James Version, millions of people believe in it.
01:44:47
So, are they believing in something that is not supposed to be in the test? Well, when you say millions of people believe in it, once again, the
01:44:53
Bible is what was originally written by the apostles. You're talking about an English translation. And I go around, anybody who was at the church
01:45:00
I spoke at this morning will tell you that twice this morning, I taught Christians about how to understand the history of their text, how to recognize the difference between the
01:45:10
Greek and the English translation, and the fact that we need to do our homework so that we are accurate students of the
01:45:15
Word of God. Okay, then you would also have to, you know, accept, you know, that the fact that the
01:45:23
Bible that you have today in English don't have side -by -side, because most of the majority of the people, you know, they don't have it side -by -side.
01:45:29
You might have it, but most of the people don't have it side -by -side. So, most of the people don't have this book that you have.
01:45:34
This is widely available, available at any Christian bookstore. Anybody can get it, and there are all sorts of parallel texts that have the
01:45:42
English and the Greek side. But, Mr. White, most of the people don't have this book that you have, even though it's there.
01:45:48
I'm not sure what most of the people have, sir. I've never done a study, but you can walk into any Christian bookstore today and find, excuse me, but you can walk into any
01:45:57
Christian bookstore today and find parallel texts for sale that have both the Greek and the English right there on the page.
01:46:03
That is not uncommon at all. Mr. White, why is it that in the book of Romans, chapter 10, verse 9, it talks about, you know, if you believe in your heart and confess to your lips that Christ is raised from the dead, you know, you are saved.
01:46:17
In other words, you have salvation. But then we have in the book of Matthew, chapter 15, verse 8, it says these people, they worship me with their lips, their heart is father for me.
01:46:25
How could that be? An amazing mixture of contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with it. One of the worst handling of the biblical text
01:46:31
I've ever seen, I'll be perfectly honest with you. Every time I've heard you say that, I'm just amazed, because Matthew, chapter 15, is parallel to Mark, chapter 7.
01:46:38
Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees because they added their traditions to the word of God.
01:46:44
Their traditions in that specific instance had to do with the Corban rule, where they allowed you to dedicate your possessions to the temples, you would not have to support your parents.
01:46:52
This is actually found in the Jewish traditional writings in the Talmud and the
01:46:58
Mishnah. And so when Jesus says that they, by their traditions, they are nullifying the word of God, he's talking about the written traditions of the
01:47:05
Jewish people. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the profession of faith that the
01:47:10
Apostle Paul says in confessing Jesus Christ, because that's exactly what Jesus said was God's will for us in John 6, 29.
01:47:17
So there is no connection whatsoever between those two texts. Well, Mr. White, you could just give a flowery word for that, but definitely...
01:47:24
What do you mean by flowery words, sir? I just gave you a contextual interpretation that anyone in the audience here could go look for themselves and see if I'm accurately handling the text.
01:47:33
Because in support with that same argument, in Matthew 17, where he said, you know, not all those who call me
01:47:39
Lord will enter heaven, but those who do the will of God in heaven will enter heaven. So that will of God, what is that will of God?
01:47:45
The will of God, of course, as Jesus explains right there, is not only to call him God, but to do what he commands.
01:47:52
And so there will be many people who will profess faith in Jesus Christ, but it is a false faith.
01:47:57
And as such, Jesus will say, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work lawlessness. And by the way, the word lawlessness there does not mean worship me for nothing.
01:48:06
It means iniquity. There is no Greek source in the world that substantiates the assertion you've made about that.
01:48:12
None. You know, it's like shirk. No, sir. Well, because if you...
01:48:18
The only sin in Islam, and in most cases, even Judaism to some extent, that you attribute partners with Allah, and that is iniquity, that is the greatest sin, that is the greatest sin that you can ever do to attribute to God Almighty that he has partners.
01:48:32
Okay. But, sir, the fact remains that the term itself does not mean what you say it means.
01:48:40
Anamion, can you show me any Greek lexicon in the world that says anamion means you worship me for nothing?
01:48:47
Well, iniquity. Anamion is the Greek term that is used. Can you show me any source anywhere in the world that defines it the way you've always used it?
01:48:56
Mr. White, I know that iniquity is to do something that is, you know, going against the grain of the established law.
01:49:02
I mean, you do something that doesn't make sense, certain that I'm not going to accept it. In other words, the only one that you're supposed to worship is
01:49:08
God Almighty. Other than that, whatever you do, it is not accepted. Simple.
01:49:16
We're out of time. Thank you, Sheikh. Gentlemen, thank you both for the stimulating exchange.
01:49:22
We appreciate the crossfire. Now we will have a time of closing arguments from both participants.
01:49:31
Dr. White will now offer a seven -minute closing argument. Once again,
01:49:45
I would like to thank you very much for being here this evening and participating. I hope that you heard me say to you, you have some work to do.
01:49:53
I want you to get the tapes, I want you to get the videotapes, and I want you to go to every text we have cited and see who's being consistent.
01:50:00
See who is handling the text in a consistent way. I am seeking, since I have begun my study of Islam, I am but a student of Islam, but I am seeking to handle the
01:50:10
Islamic sources carefully and truthfully in a way that is honoring to truth.
01:50:15
That's why I've begun to learn the Arabic language, that's why I've obtained the sources that I've obtained, because I believe it's absolutely necessary for me as a
01:50:24
Christian scholar to be truthful in how I handle the text. I want to handle it carefully. But I do not believe that the standard of meaningful exegesis that honors the text of the
01:50:34
Qur 'an has been applied to the text of either the Old or the New Testament this evening. I would invite all of you to do the homework that is necessary to find out who is speaking the truth this evening.
01:50:46
Normally, Sheikh Awal begins the citation for the Qur 'an about truth prevailing, truth becoming known. Al -Haqq, one of the 99 names of Allah.
01:50:54
But you cannot define truth without speaking of consistency. And if you have to use one standard of argumentation for somebody else's religion and a different standard for defense of your own, you've got a problem.
01:51:09
This evening, the question has been, is the Bible we possess today the Word of God? And I have emphasized to you the fact that the
01:51:16
Bible we possess today is not an English translation. The Bible we possess today is right down there on my table, and in fact,
01:51:24
I'm going to drive the poor video man crazy for a moment. Drag all this stuff here on the plane,
01:51:35
I'm going to show it to you. Here's the Bible. Greek and Hebrew.
01:51:42
If you're going to allege corruption, this is what you need to go to. And every time I ask
01:51:47
Sheikh Awal for specific scholarly citations in regards to this, he did not provide them.
01:51:54
He gave us his interpretations based upon Quranic presuppositions, but he did not give us interpretation of this text.
01:52:02
And if you're going to allege corruption, this is what you have to go to. Now, we talked about John 5, 4.
01:52:09
But we also talked about Surah 2, 222. Each of us has to explain the history of our text.
01:52:17
I believe the Christians can very clearly and very honestly explain the history of their text.
01:52:24
But here I have something else that I brought. This is the top copy manuscript of the
01:52:30
Quran. This is one of the most ancient editions of the Ithmanic Quran. However, this is produced within the past few years.
01:52:38
This was produced in Turkey. It was produced by Islamic scholars. May I point out something to you?
01:52:46
These are charts of textual variants between the major codices of the
01:52:51
Quran. Produced by Muslim scholars. Verifiable by looking at the high quality images of the
01:53:01
Quran itself. Now, here's the question. If John 5, 4 means the
01:53:07
Bible is corrupt, then those charts mean the Quran is corrupt, right? If we use the same standard, yes?
01:53:17
Now, when someone looks at John 5, 4, I can look to my critical edition of the
01:53:22
Greek New Testament and I can look up the manuscripts that contain it and do not contain it. I think very clearly it was a marginal note explaining what the actual text was saying because the angel coming down and stirring the waters that was then included in a later manuscript because, thankfully,
01:53:38
Christian scribes tend to be very conservative. They found something in the margin, they included it. That's a good thing. That means we haven't lost any of the originals.
01:53:47
But what can I do with the Quran? There is no critical edition of the Quran. There are
01:53:52
Muslim scholars who'd like to see it in the West, but there is no critical edition of the
01:53:57
Quran. Our Muslim friends here this evening who have an Arabic Quran in their possession have a 1924 Egyptian printing.
01:54:03
Who made that the standard? There are differences between it and other printings. Why shouldn't we take
01:54:10
Ibn Masud? Why shouldn't we take Ubaid Ibn Ka 'b? Ubaid Ibn Ka 'b had a different number of surahs.
01:54:16
Ibn Masud had different readings. Why do we not take them? You can't go to the Islamic sources and do the kind of textual study that you can do with the
01:54:26
New Testament. And I say to you, that's vitally important in the evaluation of the truth claims of Christianity and Islam.
01:54:37
The fact that I have 5 ,761 catalog manuscripts of the
01:54:43
New Testament, averaging 200 pages each for 1 .3 million pages of handwritten text, not including the translations into Coptic, Moharic, Latin, and other languages, allows me to recognize textual variation and to examine it and find the original amongst the variants.
01:55:00
It's still there. But when you burn the sources you use to create the
01:55:06
Ithmanic Codex, you destroy that possibility. And so I simply ask my
01:55:14
Muslim friends, think about that. Why don't you hear your Muslim scholars talking about that?
01:55:20
They should be, if they were applying the same standards, especially in their apologetics to their own texts, that they're applying to the
01:55:31
Bible. Inconsistency is the son of a failed argument.
01:55:38
Who uses the same standards? Even the Quran says, have just ways.
01:55:46
Have just standards. And we need to do that this evening as well.
01:55:52
Has the Bible been corrupted? No, God has preserved it for us. He's done it in a way that wasn't like the
01:55:59
Muslims believe the Quran was preserved by just one version protected by the sword.
01:56:05
He did it by having those manuscripts go all over the known world via persecution so that no one man or group of men could ever change those words, insert doctrines, take doctrines out.
01:56:19
It could never have happened. We've seen that from the evidence this evening. Thank you very much for being here.
01:56:30
Thank you very much, Dr. White. Sheikh Awal, you now have seven minutes for your closing arguments.
01:56:38
All right. Well, Dr. White just mentioned that the Quran, the last word as he mentioned, that the
01:56:46
Quran was championed by ways of persecution. That definitely did not happen.
01:56:52
We have so many intellectuals, men who have studied the Quran from different points of view.
01:56:57
They have come to conclusion as to the Quran. Among other things, I've given you the words of George Bernard Shaw, who wrote in his book,
01:57:05
The Genuine Islam, he said, and then Thomas Callaghan in his book, Heroes and Hero Worship, he said, the lies and the zeal that have been heaped upon the man
01:57:14
Muhammad, it is a disgrace to his alone that a human being, a man single -handedly in the desert will wield a sword on his right hand and the
01:57:23
Quran on his left hand. Subduing man to accept this Quran is one of the biggest lies the
01:57:28
West have ever perpetuated on the man Muhammad. He said this is the most misinformed and misunderstood religion in the
01:57:35
West. The early missionaries have done a wonderful job by portraying the
01:57:41
Quran and Muhammad as something that has been forced upon mankind today. And he again went on to ask, well, if that is the case today,
01:57:48
Islam is one of the fastest -growing religions in the world. People from different corners are accepting Islam despite the fact that it's going through all this, you know, a lot of things have been said about Islam.
01:57:57
And that is one of the miracles and that is one of the power of Allah that eventually, which Dr. also know,
01:58:04
Allah said, Arabic He is
01:58:09
Allah who sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to supersede each and every religion.
01:58:15
Now, Quran, the reason why you don't find so many manuscripts here and there like the
01:58:20
Bible, you know, you have to dig ground, find here in the caves and that, is because the Quran happened, it came in a full -blown history.
01:58:27
We know where Muhammad was born. We know how long he lived in this earth. We know when he died. You know, we know who collected the
01:58:34
Quran. We know who do everything. But in the case of Jesus, we don't have clear -cut information. Today, if you go to, you know,
01:58:40
Jerusalem, you find different, you know, different groups of religion. Each one and everyone is claiming this is where he was born, this is where the nativity took place.
01:58:49
We don't have all these facts. You know, so people depend on artifact here and there. But Muhammad actually was, you know, the
01:58:55
Quran came in a full -blown history. So we know everything has been preserved, like I said, preserved in the memory of the
01:59:01
Muslims. And Sayyidina Uthman did not actually burn the
01:59:06
Quran or the Qurans. They standardized the Quran in such that each and every one of the
01:59:12
Muslims in future will follow one rendition of the Quran. So therefore, all the various readings were burned, like I said, in Islam.
01:59:20
To burn the Quranic ayah is accepted. Because we cannot throw it away. You have to burn it or you have to dig the ground and put it there.
01:59:27
So now, definitely, there is no question that the
01:59:32
Quran indeed is the word of Allah and that it has been established, according to my understanding, that the
01:59:37
Bible has been changed many, many times and that each and every Bible have its own ways of dealing things and that we have different kind of religious groups in the
01:59:45
Christian realm. Each one of them have their own Bible. It's clear evidence. Many, many groups. The most ancient manuscript that you have is in contradiction with the books that we have today.
01:59:57
Some books were taken out, some books were taken in, some were rejected, some were accepted. Now, in 1
02:00:02
Corinthians 13, it says, Here you can see clearly,
02:00:14
Paul is talking about the imperfection of what they have. When that which is perfect comes, it will deal away with all that we have.
02:00:22
So we know, definitely, this is the Quran. And Muhammad have come and he established the Quran. We have the
02:00:27
Quran today. There is no contradiction in the Quran. But today, we know, the Bible have so many contradictions. Different books have also cited a revised version, which gave, you know, contradiction to the
02:00:40
King James Version. And the King James Version is mostly accepted by most of the Christians. But yet we have other books telling us that it is not right, that they have so many contradictions in the
02:00:51
Quran. Yes, the Bible really didn't give us anything.
02:00:56
What Dr. Paul just mentioned is just anything that you can say to defend yourself.
02:01:03
You can say whatever you want. You can say anything that you want. But to me, absolutely, the
02:01:09
Bible definitely have been changed. And the changing is keep going on and on and on and on.
02:01:16
In Pakistan, for example, and part of the Pakistan, for example, when the Muslim begin to point that when he, the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you.
02:01:25
They begin to change their Bible. They make it she, she, she, so that people will not say that, you know, Muhammad is a she.
02:01:31
So now, this is how the Bible is looking like. And the Bible is continue changing. It is being changed all the time.
02:01:37
So, there is no evidence that the Bible have been collected. And the way it has been collected, over 40 ,000, like he said, over 40 different writers wrote the
02:01:45
Bible from different, different part of the world. But the Qur 'an was given by one single human being in 23 years.
02:01:51
One single person wrote the Qur 'an. That is why Mahdi also supported that notion that a book written by one single human being, which is the
02:02:01
Qur 'an, in his book, you know, the 100 most influential man in history, he placed the Qur 'an to be number one.
02:02:07
And he placed Muhammad to be number one. And he said, the reason why I give my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, number three, is because Paul is the one that did all this, you know, theology of Christendom.
02:02:21
But the name Jesus Christ was only used as a figurehead. Actually, Paul is responsible with more than, almost all of the, you know, doctrine of Christendom.
02:02:32
So, based on that angle, we believe the Qur 'an have done what it is supposed to do and the
02:02:38
Bible have been changed. Now, in the book of Psalms, chapter 2, verse 7, for example, the change of verses have proved that the
02:02:44
Qur 'an, the Bible really have been changed. We see in the book of Psalms, chapter 2, verse 7, in the King James Version, it said,
02:02:50
God said to me, David speaking, God said to me, you are my son, this day I have begotten you.
02:02:56
But in the NIV, it says, God said, God said, you are my son, today I have become your father.
02:03:02
So, many people take this word to say, okay, since David said, thou art also begotten son,
02:03:09
John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. It is no more in this new
02:03:14
Bible that is coming. In the King James Version, yes, begotten is there, but in the new, in the
02:03:20
Revised Standard Version, it's been changed. The begotten is taken away because the Muslims are talking about begotten, begotten,
02:03:25
God does not beget. How could God beget? Begotten belongs to the lowest animal function of sex.
02:03:33
So, are we prepared to give it to God Almighty that He beget? No matter how you look at it, it is an insertion, it is something that Jesus Christ did not advocate.
02:03:41
It is something that was, you know, perpetuated long after Jesus Christ left the earth. And that definitely carries the weight that the
02:03:49
Bible has been changed and that changing is keep on going. It is an ongoing thing.
02:03:55
Thank you very much, Sheikh. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would please offer a round of applause for our participants.
02:04:17
At this time, we will now offer questions from the audience which you have previously submitted for both participants.
02:04:23
We will distribute the questions as evenly as possible while we have time. First question is going to be for Sheikh Awal.
02:04:32
Mr. Moderator, is it two minutes and one minute again? Yes, two minutes to question and two minutes to respond and then one minute for the opposing participant to comment.
02:04:44
Sheikh Awal, the question is, what evidence or argument would you find compelling or persuasive in demonstrating that the
02:04:52
Biblical text has not been corrupted? And in other words, what would convince you that the
02:04:59
Bible today is the Word of God? Well, I have given you other verses to show that there is a lot of variation in these books and that any books that claim to be from God Almighty must be consistent with itself.
02:05:18
And then I tried to give you the book of Mark, for example, Mark chapter 9, verse 44.
02:05:24
In the King James Version, it says, where they are warm dies not and the fire is not quenched. Now, this is also omitted in the
02:05:32
Revised Standard Version. It is not in the Good News Bible. It is not in the New International Version.
02:05:37
Now, this is a sponge. It is not there. The King James Version has it, but the other Bibles don't have it, meaning there is some changes.
02:05:45
If it's from God, there shouldn't be any changes. If a book comes from God, there should be no changes.
02:05:55
I didn't hear an answer to the question that was asked. The Sheikh did not explain to us what kind of evidence he would accept.
02:06:02
In essence, what he said was, as long as I interpret the Bible incorrectly, then it must not be the
02:06:07
Word of God. And that's what's going on here. For example, Mark chapter 9, in the text that I gave him, if you would open up to it and look at it, you'll have an entire listing of what manuscripts have and do not have that.
02:06:17
That's called a parallel corruption. It comes from another place in the Gospel that has that particular thing.
02:06:23
That's not a quote -unquote change. That's not expunging. That's Christian scholarship utilizing the full realm of all the manuscript evidence that is available to us to give us the best text, something that Muslim scholars cannot do because they do not have that information for the
02:06:39
Quran. That is the fundamental difference. And so the question was not answered.
02:06:45
What evidence would convince him? Evidently, there can't be any evidence that would convince him that the
02:06:51
Bible is the Word of God because of his Islamic presuppositions. Thank you, Dr. White. Thank you, Sheikh Lawal.
02:06:57
The next question is for Dr. White. It's ironic that you both are bringing up the text of Mark, so we will have a question regarding the text of Mark.
02:07:06
At Mark 7, Mark puts an argument in the mouth of Jesus from Isaiah that is based on an erroneous translation from the
02:07:13
Septuagint. Jesus says, teaching as doctrine the traditions of men. And in fact, the
02:07:19
Hebrew reads something like, your worship of me is merely an act of going through the motions.
02:07:25
It seems unlikely that the Pharisees would be stumped by an argument based on a mistaken translation in Greek when they read the more accurate
02:07:34
Hebrew. It looks like Mark is inventing words Jesus would not have said, and so Mark is unreliable.
02:07:40
How do you respond? The questioner is simply completely wrong in saying that Jesus is somehow quoting an
02:07:49
Old Testament text when he is first initially saying to them that they are hypocrites.
02:07:56
Now, he quotes from Isaiah, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.
02:08:04
A text that Sheol has quoted many, many times and has never had a problem with. I find that to be interesting. But then he makes the application, neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.
02:08:13
This is in reference to the washing issue and the impurity of hands issue. So, I don't understand the argumentation that somehow
02:08:21
Jesus is allegedly misquoting an Old Testament text. That may be the assertion, but I saw no evidence that that is the case whatsoever.
02:08:30
And Jesus' point is not to argue some word from the Old Testament in the first place. He is simply pointing out that these individuals, while they are very punctilious in their observation of the law and of doing things, likewise ignore the weightier matters of the law, which is the very foundation upon which
02:08:48
Jesus brought accusation against them. So, without any evidence being provided in the question of an alleged mistranslation, the
02:08:57
Greek Septuagint or anything else, there is no way of really meaningfully dealing with such an assertion. Sheikh, do you have a response?
02:09:04
Yes, the question I really have, you know, a valid question, a valid statement that he asked, and that is very true, because clearly we can see
02:09:11
Jesus Christ saying to us that, you know, these people, they worship me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.
02:09:18
And in vain do they worship me and teach me the doctrine of men. Because he knows, eventually, since he is the prophet of God, he is the messenger of God, he has that foreknowledge that eventually people will come and worship him for nothing.
02:09:27
So he gave us that answer already before he came. And today we are seeing people worshiping Jesus, calling him God, calling him
02:09:32
Son of God. And he knows that people will come and worship him, so he made that statement. And that statement is even written large in Matthew 7, verse 21.
02:09:40
You know, when he said, you know, you worship me for nothing. The only one that you should is the one
02:09:46
God Almighty. You know, the one God that you should do, you know. So, definitely, the question is legitimate.
02:09:53
And that, I don't see why I shouldn't ask that question. Dr. White, would you like to offer another response to the question?
02:10:03
It is amazing that we were just told that what Jesus is doing is prophesying in a gospel that we can reject anything we want to or accept anything we want to.
02:10:13
That Jesus is prophesying about Christians, when the immediate context is very clearly about the
02:10:20
Pharisees who are attacking his followers because they did not wash their hands the way the
02:10:25
Pharisees did. If you can cut the text of the Bible apart like this, and just rip parts out and ignore the context, then
02:10:32
I can take any book Shekel Wall has written and turn it on its head. Language requires context.
02:10:39
The context of the text is talking about Jesus and the Pharisees. Turning it into a prophecy of Christians in the future is just as wild and irrational as saying that the
02:10:51
Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 was prophesying about the Quran. The man who led everyone to engage in shirk was actually prophesying about the
02:11:01
Quran. We heard that as well. This kind of handling of the text, I want to say right now before God, I hope
02:11:07
I never treat the Quran the way the New Testament text is being treated by that kind of abuse of the text.
02:11:13
And I call on Shekel Wall. This is not scholarly. You have scholars who do not do this.
02:11:20
I call upon you. Please, sir, you need to study the text much more closely and allow the context to speak for itself.
02:11:27
Thank you, Dr. White. Shekel, would you like to offer one more one -minute response to that? Well, the message is so clear.
02:11:35
What Jesus taught is absolutely different to what is happening today. We find people actually washing in Jesus Christ. And that is the word that he gave to mankind, to be cautious not to worship him, not to take him as a messenger of God, I mean as God, something that you can worship.
02:11:52
And so what he said in the book of Mark and also in the book of Matthew that the people, they worship him with their lips, but they are far away from him.
02:11:59
I still stand with that. And this is exactly what is happening today. I've never seen people worshiping Jesus, but after he left the earth, people started worshiping him.
02:12:06
And he cautioned us and warned us that the God that is supposed to be worshipped is only one God. We'll debate that issue tomorrow evening.
02:12:13
Thank you very much, gentlemen. Sheikh Awal, the question for you is if the
02:12:20
New Testament manuscripts that currently exist today in the oldest form we have possession date back to the second century, then when do you propose that the corruption you claim occurred?
02:12:33
Well, it is just a simple, straightforward, unambiguous statement that the
02:12:39
Bible that we have today has so many variations. We have different versions of the Bible. We have the Revised Standard Version that was in 1957, the
02:12:48
Revised Standard Version in 1923. Then we have the Kings. We have different types of Bibles, and all of them are claiming to be from God.
02:12:54
And so the Quran actually said, These people who write the books with their own hands, which
02:13:01
I've quoted already. So clearly we can see that the Bible definitely has been changed. And now that the White will give you something else, it's not changing the same thing.
02:13:08
If the same thing and everything, how come different churches don't believe in one single Quran? Why is it that the
02:13:15
Jehovah's Witnesses have their own book? Why is it that the Protestants have their own book?
02:13:21
Why is it that the Roman Catholics have the dual reams of the Roman Catholics? Why is it that the book has been named the
02:13:28
King James Version? So this, to me, proves that the Bible has indeed changed.
02:13:34
It has gone through all these alterations and stuff like that. Yes. I believe everybody in the audience has already been able to detect that Sheikha Wall simply refuses to allow the facts to stand here.
02:13:46
He continues to confuse English translations with the Bible itself, even though he recognizes the distinction when it comes to Quran.
02:13:52
If I sat here and said, well, it's obvious the Quran's been changed. You've got all these different translations and you've got, and you've got the
02:13:58
Shiite version and you've got the Sunni version. You've got Ibn Masud, you've got Ubaid Ibn Ka 'b. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Different standards.
02:14:04
I don't understand how anyone can hear such simple plain facts as there's a massive difference between the original
02:14:10
Greek and English translations and then continuously say, yeah, well, the Jehovah's Witnesses have their
02:14:15
Bible, so the Bible's been changed. I think that is a clear demonstration of what this debate has proven this evening, and that is one side can honestly deal with the other side's history without having to turn it into a pretzel, and the other side cannot.
02:14:31
And that demonstrates that one side has the truth and one side does not. It seems very clear to me.
02:14:44
Thank you very much. The next question is for Sheikh Awal and Dr.
02:14:50
White. Sheikh, you may answer first. The questioner asks, is it not a claim for deity to ascribe the title
02:14:57
Messiah to Jesus? Well, the title Messiah is not, it doesn't connotate any form of deity because in the book of Isaiah we have
02:15:09
Cyrus, who is Messiah, my anointed Cyrus. Cyrus is a pagan.
02:15:16
He doesn't believe in God. So how could God say my anointed Cyrus, who is a king?
02:15:23
Is a king being anointed? Who doesn't believe in God Almighty? Anointed? Messiah means appointed, elected, selected for a special purpose, and that is what exactly
02:15:33
Jesus was selected. He was appointed to be the last messenger in Israel. So he is the
02:15:39
Messiah. He's the Mashiach or Messiah, whatever you call it. But in essence, all of these prophets were
02:15:45
Messiahs. Messiah means to anoint, to appoint, to consecrate for a job given by God Almighty for him to do.
02:15:53
That's anointing. But that epitaph is specific for Jesus. Like when we say in Islam today, if you ask any
02:15:59
Muslim who is Kalamullah, he will say Musa Kalamullah. Kalamullah means one who speaks with Allah.
02:16:04
But Allah speaks with many prophets. They are all Kalamullah, but that title is specific for Musa.
02:16:10
You ask any Muslim today who is the messenger of Allah, they will say Muhammad. But the
02:16:16
Quran also says Jesus is the messenger of Allah. So that title is specific for Muhammad as the messenger of Allah.
02:16:22
But they are all messengers. So Messiah or Mashiach is like appointed, anointed.
02:16:28
They are all appointed by Allah. They are all consecrated by Allah for a mission. So they are all Messiahs. But that title is specific for Jesus.
02:16:36
And that doesn't mean he is divine because he has the Messiahship. I don't believe that the term
02:16:42
Messiah in and of itself is a term of deity. But the Messiah who is prophesied to come, the prophecies of his coming clearly indicate his deity.
02:16:53
For example, in Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14, the prophecy of his coming, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with a child, and she'll bear a son, and she will call his name
02:17:02
Emmanuel, which Matthew tells us being interpreted God with us. In Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6, a text that amazingly enough,
02:17:11
I've actually heard Muslims apply to Muhammad. In Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6, we have the assertion about who
02:17:19
Jesus Christ will be. And in that text, he is described in a number of different ways.
02:17:24
But one of the key ways in which he is described is a way that refers to his deity. A child will be born to us.
02:17:31
That's the normal terminology of a child, a Yalad. A child, we warn to us, a son will be given to us.
02:17:39
And the government will rest on his shoulders. His name will be called wonderful counselor, El Gabor, mighty
02:17:45
God. Same terminology used of Yahweh in Isaiah 10, 21. Mighty God, eternal father,
02:17:51
Abiyad. I think that goes back to, that goes to what Paul's gonna say in Colossians chapter one, creator of all things, prince of peace.
02:17:59
And so this anointed one, this was prophesied one, the term Messiah alone.
02:18:05
It's not just Messiah for the Jews. He is the Messiah, not just the Jewish Messiah, but the Messiah for all.
02:18:10
He is anointed to bear the sins of the world, Isaiah 53. But this one is described prophetically in a much broader sense than merely being the national
02:18:21
Messiah of the Jewish people. And so that term, as it's used in its context, then carries those important implications with it.
02:18:31
Thank you, Dr. White. The next question is for you, Dr. White. The question is, the
02:18:37
Greek translation of Jeremiah differs significantly in both book length and chapter order from the
02:18:42
Masoretic text, suggesting an earlier differing Hebrew. How would you respond to the allegation that this creates uncertainty in the trustworthiness of the text?
02:18:54
Very good question. I've often raised this particular issue in warning Christians that they should not just run around and say, ah, well, look at the
02:19:01
Isaiah scroll and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's identical to the Masoretic text, showing the text didn't change for a thousand years.
02:19:07
As soon as you say that, some smart person like someone in the audience tonight can say, yes, but the Greek Septuagint version of Jeremiah is significantly different than the
02:19:16
Masoretic text. Actually, Jeremiah, I think the text itself provides us with the reason why there is a fundamental difference, because Jeremiah narrates for us the fact that he was already recording his prophecies, and he was bringing them to the secular authorities, to the governmental authorities, and the governmental authorities were not overly happy with Jeremiah's prophesying that not only were they misleading the people of God, but that judgment was going to come upon the people and the temple was going to be destroyed and that they were to be subject to the
02:19:45
Babylonians for 70 years and all the rest of that stuff. And so remember, Jeremiah himself records the destruction of the written version of his prophecies at one point during the prophecy.
02:19:56
And so I think that that may be the origination of the two different lengths of the traditions that we have between the
02:20:05
Hebrew that was the background of the Greek Septuagint translation and the Hebrew that becomes the part of the
02:20:11
Masoretic tradition. I'm very thankful, once again, for the fullness of the
02:20:16
Old Testament textual tradition that we have not only in the Aramaic Targums and things like that, but the fact that we have both the
02:20:23
Greek Septuagint version, which is an extremely important version, one of my favorite things to study, as well as the
02:20:29
Masoretic tradition as well, which again, we can look up. How did this person know this question?
02:20:37
Because we make all of our information available to everybody. What if the same type of thing had happened with the
02:20:45
Quran and then you burned the evidence? Nobody would be asking questions because nobody would know.
02:20:51
Big difference. Sheikh? Well, like I said,
02:20:57
Othman didn't just burn the Quran because he's trying to hide something. Othman, who is very close to Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, who is very close to him, as a matter of fact,
02:21:04
I think he's the third in line, the Khalifa. After the Messenger died, he was the third in line to become the
02:21:10
Khalifa. So how could a man like Othman, with all sincerity and truthfulness, burn the
02:21:15
Quran purposely because he's trying to hide something, or purposely because he doesn't agree with some verses? Nobody could talk this
02:21:21
Quran. Nobody can burn it just like, I'm going to burn it just so I'm going to hide some facts.
02:21:26
No, it is not like that. Like I said, the Quran, we don't just throw the Quran around. Out of respect, we burn the
02:21:32
Quran if there's no use to it, like the fragmentations. Or we bury it.
02:21:39
So what Othman did, the wife kept saying that he burned, he burned, he's trying to hide the truth.
02:21:45
He didn't burn the Quran. Okay, fine. How come he, who has seen Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and have lived with him, burned the
02:21:51
Quran, and after him, nobody else touched the Quran. We who haven't seen him yet, nobody mishandled the Quran. But he who is very close to Muhammad, have touched the
02:21:59
Quran and destroyed it. That doesn't make any sense to me. Absolutely, he didn't burn the Quran just like that. Thank you,
02:22:04
Sheikh. Next question is for Sheikh Awal. In your opening statement, Mr. Awal, you presented many reasons why the
02:22:11
Bible is not the word of God. Yet, all of the assertions are based on your personal views of what
02:22:16
God should reveal in His word. With this being said, what historical evidence do you have to show any of the
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Old Testament or New Testament stories are not true? Well, I've given you a lot of quotations from the
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Bible to show that mine is just simple. The text itself, as we read in the
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Bible, I've given you why this verse comes from God Almighty, why there is varying reading, why this part is omitted.
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I've given you about, I think, eight or seven or eight different quotations from the Bible to show that this part is expunged, this part is not in, this part have been taken, this group have said.
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This is it. So, if these things are in the word of God, then there is a problem to me. If there is one word that is missing in the word of God, to me there is a problem because God is all perfect, all knowing, omnipotent, that there shouldn't be this kind of, you know, disproportion in His book.
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So, definitely, yes, there is this kind of, you know, inconsistency in the Bible based on the text itself which
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I've given you. Like I said, many quotations I've quoted to show that the Bible has been changed. If it is not changed, then it has to be in one single form.
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How come some part is not in this part, this part have this part, this part is taken, this part is restored? It is an ongoing trend and it is an ongoing, it is still going and there is always going to be different variation of the
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Bible. Yes, I believe the Bible have been changed. Thank you, Sheikh. So, if we are consistent, if we are consistent, then the
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Quran is not the word of God because I put on the screen the changes in Surah 2, 222, right? And Ibn Masud had different readings than Uthman, right?
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And Uba 'i Ibn Ka 'b had a different number of surahs than Uthman did, right? Therefore, using the reasoning that was just given to us, what is the only conclusion we can draw?
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Sheikh Awal does not believe the Quran is the word of God, but he does. Therefore, he is being inconsistent.
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Is he not? Yes, he is. He continues to ignore the clear distinction which he allows for the
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Quran between the original language and translations, but he forces us to defend
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English translations as if they are the Bible itself. Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.
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As he continues to use these bad arguments that are clearly irrational, what he is saying to us is
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I have no meaningful arguments on these matters. Thank you,
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Dr. White. Thank you, Sheikh Awal. Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude the debate between Sheikh Awal and Dr.
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White. At this time, we would like to ask you that you please exit out the doors on the exterior aisles and that if you would like...