Scripture, Apologetics and Islam Part 3

Good afternoon everybody. Let's finish this up. You're tired, I'm tired, but we're not done yet, and some of you traveled a long ways, so you need to get your money's worth. We've been here so long, the sun's coming through the other windows now, so that gives you an idea how long we've been at it.

So I will try to be respectful of your time, and yet we want to finish up what we were looking at. Make sure you've got everything you need to have, and it's been a great afternoon. I appreciate Jeff's presentation.

I will admit that's a subject I could never begin to address. Jeff and I's backgrounds and histories are very, very, very different, and yet in God's providence, we have been thrust together in that field with issues in my own family, and it's been very great to have Jeff and his expertise in that area, so I appreciate very much what he had to say.

The only thing that really disappointed me was he didn't mention what one of the first books he ever read as a Christian was. Why was that, Jeff? I'm a little hurt that you didn't tell everybody what one of the first books you read as a Christian was.

The King James Only Controversy. That explains a lot of things about Jeff, because I would not really suggest that as one of the first books. It sort of warps the mind a little bit, and yeah, there you go.

Anyways, it's been a great day, a great afternoon, morning, afternoon, whatever time it is. My clock is a little bit off, but it's not too bad. I'm about to go to Wellington, and I did want to thank, when I was in Brisbane, speaking there, some good, kind Christian brothers gave me an All Blacks jersey, and so some good brothers here just decided to try to retake the ground.

So, there you go, there you go. I almost, if it wouldn't have clashed so badly with gray dress slacks, I think that would have looked extremely corny. I would have put it on, and we would have done our last session wearing the jersey there, but who knows, maybe I'll have to dig that out while I'm in New Zealand and see what the response there is.

Christian apologist missing after his last scene running into the bush, wherever we are. It's always been the way it is today, that it's sort of floated down from heaven, leather bound and everything else, and so a knowledge of the history of our own text is unusual for many people, and the same thing is true for Muslims.

The Textual History of the Quran and Palimpsest Manuscripts

But, this translates into a fundamental distrust on their part of our scriptures, and on the screen are just some of the textual variants. Here is another example. This is from Surah 222, and what you're seeing here, I'm going to have to define a term for you that I'm sure you're all going to be discussing over dinner this evening.

You're just going to fascinate people, I'm sure, with this discussion. But, you will see that it says, Ibn Masud, Surah 2, 222, The Fog's Palimpsest Manuscript and Sa 'ana. Now, what in the world is all that?

A palimpsest manuscript is, remember, the better manuscripts in the ancient world were made out of parchment, which is animal skin, extremely thinly sliced animal skin, and hence it could be washed. It's a little bit like your money here.

It can go through the washer and still survive. Don't try that with a $20 bill in the United States. It's gone after that. And so, you could wash it, and then you could take the ink off and write something new on it.

But, since it's an animal skin, and you used a stylus to write initially, there's a scarring on the surface that, through the use of ultraviolet or infrared, whatever that particular surface reacts best to, you can actually read what is under what was then written over the top.

So, you can actually see what the manuscript originally said through the use of special technology. And, we have found some manuscripts of the Quran. I think there are more manuscripts of the Quran like this out there, but some of them have simply disappeared.

I remember a few years ago, one came up for auction at Sotheby's in London. Nobody knows who bought it, and no one's ever seen it since. It was a palimpsest manuscript of the Quran, and as far as we know, it's gone.

And, will it ever appear? Will we ever know what was written on it? Don't know. That's a concerning thing. But, you can read the underlayer, and in the 1970s, they were rebuilding a mosque in Sana 'a, the capital of Yemen, and they broke through a wall and found a cache of ancient Quranic manuscripts.

And, some people believe that these are the earliest manuscripts that we possess, and that some of them are actually older than the third caliph, Uthman. I'm going to read you the story of Uthman here in a few moments.

Anyway, the point is that these palimpsest manuscripts have revealed to us textual variants. And, you can see in the graphic there, along the top, is the standardized text that Muslims would have today.

And then, down below, you can see that the variations are not variations of spelling or something like that. They are fundamental edits, because they involve the changing of grammatical endings and things like that.

In other words, these weren't mistakes. This was purposeful editing in a previous version of the Quran. 99 .99 of Muslims in the world have never heard of a palimpsest manuscript and have never heard of the Sana 'a manuscripts.

And so, they're just not aware of these things. Only some of their leading scholars are aware of these specific issues, but they're there. Then, here's another example. Notice, in the middle of, you see how, you can just barely see how something, the Arabic letters right in the middle.

See how the angle is different in the two in the middle than all the other angles of the letters? And, you can tell there was something behind it. This is where a correction has been made in this manuscript.

And, without going into a lot of detail, here is a larger version of it. And, you can, this is the fourth, one, two, three, fourth line from the bottom over toward the right is what I had blown up before.

This is manuscript 328A. I have a museum-quality facsimile of this particular Quran in my library. In fact, these are pictures from my version of it. And, without going into a lot of the details, what's fascinating here is in this particular manuscript, this variant here has to do with the issue of the succession in the leadership of the Muslim people.

And, if you know anything about the history of Islam, the fundamental thing that caused the Sunni-Shia split, which still results in bloodshed to this day, was who was going to be the caliph, the head of the caliphate.

And, you know that the Shiites believe it was supposed to be a familial descent through Ali and his descendants. The Sunnis believe in the rightly guided caliphs, and hence it went to Abu Bakr, and then eventually to Uthman, who was the third, Umar, and then to Uthman, who was the third caliph.

And, then you had civil war and things like that. And, you've really had civil war ever since then, to be perfectly honest with you, in the relationship of the two. Well, later on in the manuscript, we find this.

And, it's hard to see, but there is a stub between folios 19B and 20A in BNF 328A. That is a torn out page. Now, why would you tear a page out like that? Well, if you think about how ancient manuscripts were made, you'd take a longer sheet of paper and you'd fold it through.

So, if you tear it all the way out to the spine, the other sheet on the other side is going to fall out. So, you have to leave enough in the gutter to hold the other sheet in. So, what has happened is this is the sheet that was then put into place.

And, notice, you can see it yourself without being able to read almost any Arabic at all. But, notice at the top how tight the lines are and how much smaller it is in comparison to down at the bottom.

What clearly has happened here is someone is replacing a sheet and there has been an insertion made. And, now they've got to make this sheet fit with what was already written before. So, they know where they've got to get to, but they've got to get it onto a smaller space.

So, you're writing smaller and smaller, and then as you get toward the bottom, oh, it looks like I'm going to make it. Oh, okay, I made it, you know. And, you can see the spacing. Clearly, what you have going on here is not accidental errors like Homo Etelyuton or something like that.

This is specific editing of the text taking place in one of the earliest Qurans that we possess. And, so, you go, well, okay, but, you know, someone inserted the Priccape adultery, the woman taken in adultery.

Well, that had nothing to do with the key political issue of the day, which was succession and the caliphate. This did. And, then, you don't have the background that the Muslim sources themselves give to you as to what happened with the Quran.

Listen, there are, the Sunni have six authoritative collections of hadith. Hadith are the sayings, actions of Muhammad and his immediate followers in the first generations of Islam. And, the collections of hadith become the very source of Sharia law and are the lens through which the Quran is read.

And, so, all of the different groups, the arguments that you'll hear between Wahhabis and Salafis and all the other groups, all goes back to your view of the hadith. Orthodox Sunnis believe the hadith are authoritative.

They're not inspired like the Quran is, but they're close. And, then, the more liberal the Sunnis become, the less emphasis is placed upon the role of the hadith. And, almost everyone calling for reformation in Islam today recognize the only way that could ever happen is for there to be a fundamental reorientation of the view of the hadith.

The two most important collections are Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. And, I've read both of these. There's eight volumes and nine volumes, English, Arabic, respectively. I listened to all of them while riding a bike.

That's how I listened to the hadith. I turned them all into mp3 recordings and listened to them while riding a bike, which is an interesting way of doing things. And, here in Bukhari, which is really considered the best and most authoritative collection, we have the story of what happened in the collection of the Quran.

This is from Islamic sources, so listen to what it says. Narrated Zayd bin Thabit, Abu Bakr Asidic, Abu Bakr was the second caliph, sent for me when the people of Yamamah had been killed, i .e. a number of the prophet's companions who fought against Musaylimah.

Musaylimah was a, well, they would consider him to be a false prophet, but he was a prophet who arose after Muhammad. Abu Bakr then said to me, Umar has come to me and said casualties were heavy among the qurra of the Quran, i .e. those who knew the Quran by heart.

On the day of the battle of Yamamah, and I am afraid that more heavy casualties may take place among the qurra on other battlefields, whereby a large part of the Quran may be lost. Now, I stop right there.

Our Arabic readers in the audience can read what is there, and you can see the term qathir. Qathir means a large part, a major portion. And so, there was a concern expressed within the Islamic sources after the death of Muhammad, this was very shortly after the death of Muhammad, but within a couple of years after the death of Muhammad, that the Quran existed only in the memories of men.

And that if more of those who had memorized the Quran died, then a large portion of the Quran might be lost. So, in other words, there was no codification, there was no writing down of the entirety of the Quran during Muhammad's life.

Many Muslims will tell you today, oh no, no, no, no, he checked everything himself, and blah, blah, blah, blah. But the sources just simply do not substantiate that kind of a concept at all. And you have that being said right here.

Therefore, I suggest you, Abu Bakr, or the Quran be collected. I said to Umar, how can you do something which Allah's Apostle did not do? Umar said, by Allah, that is a good project. Umar kept on urging me to accept his proposal to Allah, opened my chest for it, and I began to realize the good in the idea which Umar had realized.

So, I started looking for the Quran and collecting it from what was written on palmed stocks, thin white stones, and also from the men who knew it by heart. So, in other words, this is all very fragmentary.

You're not talking about manuscripts or anything like that, you're talking about fragmentary recollections. Till I found the last verse of Surah Al-Tawbah, the Surah of Repentance, which is Surah 9, by the way.

With Abi Qusaymi al-Ansari, and I did not find it with anybody other than him. So, here is one verse that Zayd bin Thabit finds with one man, in one man's memory. Only he had it memorized, no one else had it memorized, and that's where it came from.

Now, just think for a second. What about all those people who died in the Battle of Yamama? How many of them may have had a verse that no one else knew? That raises the issue, do we have everything that Muhammad even dictated to his followers?

Even from Islamic sources. This is an Islamic source that I'm reading here. That is a question. And that verse is, Verily there has come unto you an Apostle Muhammad from amongst yourselves. It grieves him that you should receive any injury or difficulty until the end of Surah Al-Tawbah.

So, then the complete manuscripts, or copy of the Quran, remained with Abu Bakr until he died, then with Umar until the end of his life, and then with Hafsa, the daughter of Umar. So, we have one manuscript collected under Abu Bakr shortly after Muhammad's death.

Even after the Battle of Yamama. Okay? So, then we go on from there. Hudayf bin al-Yaman came to Uthman. Now, Uthman is the third caliph. This is about 20 years later. This is around 650. So, about 20 years later, Hudayf was afraid of there, the people of Sham and Iraq's differences in the recitation of the Quran.

Now, listen to this. So, he said to Uthman, O chief of the believers, save this nation before they differ about the book, the Quran, listen, as Jews and Christians did before. So, there was a concern that there would be divisions amongst the Muslims about the interpretation of the text, as Jews and Christians did before them.

So, Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, send us the manuscripts of the Quran, so we may compile the Quranic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you. Now, notice it says manuscripts, but then what does it say?

Hafsa sent what? It. To Uthman. There's a bit of a contradiction there when you think about it. Uthman then ordered Zayd bin Thabit, Abdullah bin Az-Zubair, Zayd bin al-As, and Abdur-Rahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies.

You try to say that three times fast, okay? To rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies, Uthman said to the three, now these were men of the Quraishi tribe, he said to the three Quraishi men, in case you disagree with Zayd bin Thabit on any point of the Quran, then write it in the dialect of the Quraish.

The Quran was revealed in their, and it should say language, but obviously it got lost when I upgraded this particular version. Anyways, the Quran was revealed in their tongue, or their language, their dialect.

They did so, now listen to this, they did so, and when they had written many copies, Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all other Quranic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.

So this is the very definition of what? Controlled transmission. This is a government, and the leader of a religion, producing an official version, and sending it to the major Islamic cities, and saying, this is what you will use, and anything else that you have, burn it.

Go with this. Now this doesn't work for you, but for an American, this would be like being forced to use the Obama translation of the Bible. I can assure you, I ain't doing that. I ain't giving up my Greek manuscripts, or my New American Standard for the Obama version of the Bible, or the coming Clinton version of the Bible, which will be published from prison.

But anyway, do you think if we drafted the Queen, she'd accept us? I really, I like her, she is classy people, and I, anyway. I just ruined everyone's train of thought, didn't I? You were all so trained in, and now you're thinking about Donald Trump, and that is pretty much not what I wanted you to do at all.

But notice, it goes on to say, Zayd bin Thabit added, a verse from Surah Az-Zab was missed by me when we copied the Quran, and I used to hear Allah's Apostle reciting it, so we searched for it and found it, with Kuzaymi bin Thabit al-Ansari.

The verse was, among the believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah, which is Surah 33, 23. In other words, when they first collected the Quran, 20 years passed, and someone said, oh wait a minute, what about that other one?

And so this verse was not added in for 20 years, into the final collection that was made, the official version that was then distributed to people. Now this is called the Uthmanic revision, and it's a part of the Islamic sources themselves.

And I tend to think that it has a solid basis in reality, because it's an embarrassing story. You're talking about stuff that was missing, you're talking about memorizers who had died, you're talking about finding verses with only one person, there's a lot of stuff here that doesn't sound like something that would be made up down the road.

What's made up down the road is, oh actually, Muhammad oversaw the collection of all the things in the Quran, there were 30 ,000 people who had memorized it, and they all said the exact same thing. That's the later stuff that you would expect.

This is not the kind of stuff that you would expect. And what's very interesting is, you have that in the Islamic sources. And so you have a recension. Now Uthman is murdered, and the forces that will eventually lead to the Sunni-Shia split, and literally civil war, are already active at that time.

We saw what happened in BNF 328a, and the changing of the page, and the relevant materials there. And so this is all happening at the same time. So you're making a recension of the Quran right at the time there is a brewing theological argument going on.

That's highly significant. Highly significant. So that's the Muslim witness. Now there were Christians who began responding to Islam very early on, and one of the most fascinating of those responses is from a fellow by the name of al-Kindi.

Now there is a famous al-Kindi amongst the Muslims, who is a philosopher, this is a different al-Kindi. This is a Christian who flourished during a time of one of the caliphates that was very open, and more accepting and allowing of different viewpoints before that changed.

And listen to what al-Kindi wrote. Now this is a Christian writing. I want everybody to understand. We read Bukhari, that's the Muslim perspective. Listen to the parallels in what this Christian writes right around the same time.

Because Bukhari, the hadith are being collected, 250, 300 years after the time of Muhammad. That's a long time. That's a very lengthy period of time. So here's what al-Kindi says. The result was that in the caliphate of Uthman, it was discovered that there was no consent as to the true text.

One man then read one version of the Quran, his neighbor another, and differed. One man said to his neighbor, my text is better than yours, while his neighbor defended his own. So additions and losses came about and falsifications of the text.

Uthman was told that various versions were in use, that the text was being tampered with, and that strife with all the mischief of party spirit was being engendered. They said, we do not believe that matters can continue as they are.

It is an affair of urgency. They are slaying one another. The sacred book is corrupted. A second apostasy is imminent. Ubay, the son of Kab, Ubay ibn Kab, was dead before it was made, while ibn Masud, remember that name, refused to give up his copy of the Quran, so they drove him from his post in Kufa and appointed Abu Musa as governor in his place.

Let me just stop for a moment. Abdullah ibn Masud, fascinating fellow. Fascinating fellow. Muhammad in the Hadith pointed to him as one of the four men to learn the Quran from. But Uthman and Abdullah ibn Masud did not get along, primarily because Uthman did not choose Abdullah to be one of those that collated the Quran.

And so when Uthman promulgated his version, ibn Masud said, don't use that. Hide your Qurans. And numerous of what's called Tafsir literature, Tafsir means commentary on the Quran, there are numerous references in the Tafsir literature to the differences that existed in the manuscripts that were traceable to Abdullah ibn Masud over against those that were traceable to Uthman.

And we're not talking just about differences in pronunciation. We're talking about differences in the actual continental text between Masud's readings and those that Uthman promulgated as the final authority.

And so according to this source, now it's interesting, the sources are contradictory as to what happened to ibn Masud. The Shiite sources say that he was beaten and eventually died of his beating because he would not give up his Quran.

The Sunni sources say that he and Uthman died in, that when ibn Masud died, he and Uthman embraced and they were friends and buds. And I don't know about you, I've read enough about ibn Masud. He wasn't buds with Uthman ever.

He just seems like one of those guys. So in that instance, it seems to me the Shiite sources are a little bit more truthful at that point. Anyway, when the revision had been completed according to the various manuscripts, four copies were made.

Now check this out. Four copies were made in large text, one of which was sent to Mecca, a second remained in Medina, a third was sent to Syria and is today in Malatya. So Kindi had access to information as to exactly where the manuscripts had actually even been sent.

Next, Uthman gave directions that the leaves and sheets of the Quran should be gathered in from the provinces. He ordered his agents to collect all that they could lay their hands on and destroy them till it should be certain that not a sheet remained in the possession of any private individual.

You want controlled transmission? This is controlled transmission to the nth degree. Heavy penalties were threatened against the disobedient. All the leaves they could secure were shredded and boiled in vinegar till they were sodden.

Nothing remained, not even the smallest fragment that could be deciphered. You know what happened between Ali, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman? This is the eventual Sunni-Shia split. How they hated each other and quarreled and corrupted the text.

How each one tried to oppose his neighbor and to refute what he had said. Pray, how are we to know which is the true text and how shall we distinguish it from the false one? Now this is ancient Christian apologetic against Islam and notice what it's focusing upon.

The same story, clearly, that is the basis for the discussion that we saw in Bukhari. Now there are obviously differences between the two but they're obviously clearly drawing from the same historical reality and the things that came from that.

Fascinating and again, sadly when I debated Adnan Rashid on this subject, this was before Adnan and I had, it's fascinating, I should mention this in passing. Adnan and I debated at Kensington Temple in London back in May and then we had debated at Trinity College in Dublin in, I think it was 2014.

Right around that time, I finally had the opportunity of sitting down with Adnan over lunch and expressing to him why I do what I do, why I care for the Muslim people and why I'm involved in apologetics like this.

Every debate since then has been wonderful. Not wonderful in the sense of, oh, we won. Wonderful in the sense that he's still an irascible, aggressive fella. He's a big Pakistani guy and that's just the way Adnan is but you see, it's amazing because Adnan knows I love him and Adnan knows I pray for him and it's changed every debate since then.

I wish that had happened before the debate we did about the transmission of the Quran, the Bible because I think it might have gone differently but in that particular debate, Adnan's only response to my citation of al-Kindi was, well, he's a Christian, he's a Christian and there were these young radicals right on the front pew and they were doing the Allahu Akbar thing all the time and they thought I'd be intimidated by that and so when I got up, I made a really good point and I looked at him and said, why don't I get an Allahu Akbar for that?

And they were sort of looking at me like, so one of them goes, Allahu Akbar. So they just, they didn't, they don't know what to do with a Christian who will look at them and will say, I love you, I respect you, I've done everything I can to understand what you believe, to represent it accurately but you simply have to understand Jesus is not merely a prophet he is the one who made you, you must deal with him as Lord and they just, they respect you.

They respect the proclamation of a Jesus who's the real Jesus. I'm afraid, and this is a sermon that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about but you get it anyways. I'm afraid that many times, Christians present only a part of Jesus to the Muslim people.

They present the love of Jesus and they need to know about the love of Jesus. But the Bible teaches us about a Jesus who is loving and compassionate and merciful but he's also the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and he rules the nations with a rod of iron and someday, remember what it says in the book of Revelation, one of the most amazing phrases that has ever been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God.

When people cry out for the mountains to hide them, what are they crying out to be hidden from? Remember the phrase? The wrath of the Lamb. The wrath of the Lamb. Because you see, the Lamb gave his life but then the Lamb will someday have wrath for those that are not in him.

And so, I like to proclaim to the Muslim people you need to understand, Jesus Christ made you. Every breath of your mouth, every beat of your heart comes from his hand and you cannot be neutral about him.

And if he is your creator, if he is your maker, then you must deal with him. You cannot dismiss him as a mere prophet. And you can get some pretty interesting looks when you preach that to a bunch of young, bearded radicals on the front pew.

They're not really sure what to do with that. Especially when it comes from someone who's tried his best to accurately represent them. And so, here you have the real question. Here's the real question.

Which methodology gives us the most certainty? As to the real question, do we possess the original words of the authors we believe to have inspired of God? The free transmission of the New Testament text precludes editing and revision and the manuscript tradition shows us tenacity.

We know that the original readings still exist. But the controlled transmission of the Quran, together with the ethmonic revision, the possible later work of Abd al-Malik, I didn't go into that, but there are some people who see evidence of a further revision in around 705 A .D., according to our calendar, under Abd al-Malik.

And the evidence of the differing traditions of Ibn Masud, Uba 'i Ibn Ka 'b, and possibly others seen in the Su 'ana manuscripts raises serious questions as to the originality of the ethmonic tradition.

Now, I don't think there's much question that the Arabic Quran carried by a Muslim today is pretty much what Uthman produced. I don't see much evidence that there is much difference. There are some people who theorize, as I said, the Abd al-Malik revision later on, but I haven't seen much documentary or manuscript evidence that would suggest anything major in a way of interrupting the ethmonic transmission from that time period.

But the point is this, once you have a major effort at recension, which includes the destruction of pre-existing manuscripts, and we have two sources, Muslim and Christian, testifying to the same reality along those lines, once you have revision, then the more successful that revision is, the less possibility you have of ever obtaining the original wording of that document to begin with.

And what was amazing was Adnan's response to that in London when we first debated this was, well, hey, if we can at least get back to Uthman, that's good enough for me. And I was like, how can that be?

Uthman wasn't a prophet. Muhammad did the very essence of Islamic belief. Why do the Muslims, why do Sunni and Shiite Muslims reject the Ahmadi, the Ahmadi Muslims? Because Ahmadi Muslims believe there is a prophet after Muhammad.

And so, if you can't get back to what Muhammad himself actually gave, what good is anything else? And yet his response was, well, as long as we can get back to Uthman, that's good enough. No, it is not.

And certainly it's not good enough for us, from our perspective, in the New Testament. Well, we can at least get back to the Council of Nicaea. So? That's not good enough for us. It certainly should not be good enough for the Muslim either.

Islamic scholars and apologists must recognize that merely asserting the perfection of the Uthmanic tradition proves nothing. The realities of the variant traditions must be embraced and examined before the Quran can be proven to have been accurately transmitted.

And so, why do I present this to you? Well, first of all, hopefully you now see why I spent so much time making little manuscripts and move across a map of the ancient world and talk about multifocality and the free transmission of the text.

And if you grasped that, and if you could accurately contrast for a Muslim the difference between how the New Testament was transmitted to us and how the Quran was transmitted to us, you know what that means?

That means you're amongst a very, very small number of Christian believers in the world today. A microscopic number. And yet, that's one of the things they need to understand because what did I say to you were the three barriers?

What are the three barriers? Shirk, denial of the cross, and then the near-universal belief on the part of Muslims that the Bible has been corrupted. And the only way that they can embrace that argumentation of corruption is to ignore the history of their own text.

They love folks like Bart Ehrman, but if you applied Bart Ehrman's methodology to the Quran, it would not only disprove the inspiration of the Quran, it would do so even to a greater extent because Ehrman's methodology would focus upon the recensional characteristic of Uthman's work and the editing of the text.

It would have to, to be consistent. Now, Ehrman won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. He will not even comment on the Quran because he knows how politically incorrect it would be and I'll just be perfectly honest with you, he's a coward.

He makes money off of his books and he will not do what he needs to do to say the same thing and be truthful and make the same application to any other ancient work. He's only concerned about substantiating his own apostasy from Christianity.

He doesn't need to have any problems with anything else. But if you were to consistently apply the very same methodology that he employed in probably his single most famous scholarly work, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, to the Quran, absolutely devastating to the Quranic text in light of the revisions that have been made in it, even according to the Muslim sources.

So, that helps, hopefully, for you and I to recognize because you see, for a lot of Christians, you hear about the variations and it's like, well, why did God do it that way? What God did in the way that he wrote the New Testament and having it distributed the way that it was, is that's how he protected the text.

Did Shirley MacLaine ever get down here to Australia? Ever heard of who Shirley MacLaine is? Anyone heard of her? She's an actress and she went off into the New Age in the 1980s and she put out a movie called Out on a Limb and she got into all this weird New Age stuff where she gets a guru and a trans-channeling and a spirit guide and all that wild and strange stuff.

Do you have a city in Australia where all the weird New Agers sort of congregate? Where is it? Byron Bay. So, she'd fit in real well in Byron Bay. We have way more of them than you do, unfortunately. We have one within bike riding distance of Phoenix called Sedona.

It's beautiful. Anybody ever been to Sedona? Sedona is the Grand Canyon upside down. So, in other words, you go into the bottom and the red rocks, oh, it's a beautiful, beautiful place but it's been ruined by all the weird people sitting on the rocks going, oh, and stuff like that.

It's just, I don't even like going there anymore because of all the weird people. She got into all that stuff and so in her movie, for example, she's walking along the seashore and her guru's teaching her to say, I am God.

I am God. I am God. And we're all sitting at home going, no, you're not. No, you're not. And she used to tell people that the Bible taught reincarnation but they took it out at the Council of Constantinople.

Now, how do you respond to that? I'm sorry? You just laugh. Oh, you turn it off. Okay. How many of us know what actually happened? How many of you, without Googling, put your phones down now. How many of you know when the Council of Constantinople was?

This same group over here is very strange. It's sort of worrying me. This one little section. A bunch of theology students, right? Yeah. This would be the section where I would show the people taking the Shahada and I'd be talking about how it's different than Islam.

You have to do it in Arabic and stuff like that. And then I'd say, for example, how many of you made your profession of faith in either Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek? And something tells me somebody right around there.

And you probably actually believe it, which would be the scary part. But anyways, few people know when the Council of Constantinople was, but not very many people either know when it was or what it dealt with.

And the idea that the Council of Constantinople in 381 could actually change the text of Scripture, most of us are left going, well, I don't even know how to respond to that. I don't think that's true, but I've never heard any discussion of it.

Hopefully, even after today, you know why that's impossible. We have manuscripts that predate the Council of Constantinople. And so if there had been some kind of major change where reincarnation was taken out of the Bible in 381, and now we have manuscripts that predate 381, guess what?