The Dumbest Thing Ever Said About Islam

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

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

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

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

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

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James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon, a warm and toasty one, and I am disappointed to say the humidity levels are spiking as well.

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It's the end of June and I'd sort of like to see that hold off until at least the second week of July, but humidity levels are coming up and that makes the 110 all the more interesting to experience.

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But anyways, hey, that's what you expect in Phoenix, Arizona at the end of June. It is warm here.

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This is the real Dividing Line for those of you who have, Algo is, I think he has collapsed out of sheer joy and ecstasy.

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Has he even slept? I don't think he, I think he stayed up all night because we were running, we were running

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Dividing Lines 24 -7 and evidently won't be doing that over the weekend, right?

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Will be doing it over the weekend. Oh, I don't know how you can do that. Just load it up with shows and let it roll.

01:59

Oh, I didn't know that we had, I thought you were recording all these things while you were doing it.

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We've been recording them for a long time. Okay. All right. So, we'll probably put something up, but for those of you listening now, if you just can't get enough of the

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Dividing Line, then we're going to, we're just going to be running it all the time.

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And every once in a while, interrupt it with a new one that no one's ever heard before, I guess.

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And that's what we're doing right now. This is the live one. We will need to remind people. This is the live

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Dividing Line, not the one from 1998. I got some pretty good feedback in email this morning.

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Yeah. There's folks. The general consensus was, it's about time. Oh, okay.

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All right. Well. Okay. Okay. But like I said, I expect the next few months, we'll have a little bedroll in the other room and Rich will have this long beard and just be sitting there spinning your favorites in between the

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Dividing Lines. And it's going to be pretty strange. So anyway, if you want to listen to Dividing Lines all the time, just click that button and listen in as you are listening in, even right now.

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And they go back a long ways. We don't have any of them before we went on KHEP, do we?

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Back in the 80s? Some of those with you and me. We might. There might be a couple of them in there. But originally, we didn't really date it by the time we did the show.

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The late 80s, early 90s shows were, you'd do a show and we'd go, oh, cool topic.

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Let's give it a number and give it a title. That's true. Rolled it right into the shopping cart. That's true. Any more, after a while, we just couldn't keep up.

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So we just started putting dates on them. Yeah. There were some interesting ones back then.

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No two days about it. I blogged about the one with my kids. I thought

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I had not heard that one in ages. That was fun. That was really fun to listen to. I think somewhat educational, actually.

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So there might be some interesting things you hear. And feel free to tune in.

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In other news, it looks like the open forum is closed.

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That Harold Camping has taken his last collar. And from what

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I read, I couldn't verify this, but I read he's actually still in the hospital. So that's a long period of time.

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And that would mean it was very serious. And in all probability, we have heard the last of Harold Camping.

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And the sad thing is, I mean, there's many sad things. The number of lives that have been impacted and destroyed by the false teaching of Harold Camping.

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It's very sad to see the people who are just now standing up and defending him, but they don't have the ability to do what he did.

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They can't pull it off. And so it just strikes me that this is a cult group that has been suddenly, you know, they've had their leader removed, and now they don't know what to do.

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And it looks, sadly, someone sent me an email that was sent out by one of the board members of Family Radio, and, you know, they're just as committed to their heresy as ever.

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So Family Radio will be destroyed. It will no longer exist. There will be another, what could have been a

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Witness for Christ, destroyed. They'll be probably auctioning off stations. And I did read something very strange this morning that caught my attention, and I'm going to be watching to see what else comes out on this.

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But in the secular press this morning, and it's the secular press, so take it for what it's worth, but evidently they were looking through the

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IRS stuff, and the board loaned

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Harold Camping $175 .5

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million. What was that for? That strikes me as very, very, very, very strange.

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Was that the billboard stuff? I don't know, but that's what they said.

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Could be interesting. You know, the new IRS structure for 501c3s, if you loan five cents to a board member, it has to be listed separately and explained.

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Yeah. Now... Oh, there was no explanation. To my knowledge, it's not necessarily illegal or anything, but it has to be recorded and shown.

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But there was no explanation as to the purpose of the loan. So that will be interesting to see what comes of that.

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And it's just sad. It is, and I don't mean sad in the sense of, oh, poor

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Mr. Camping. Look, the man was a false teacher and he's been silenced. And I'm sad for his followers who have been duped, but they have been duped and they have been warned repeatedly over and over and over and over and over and over again.

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And it seems many of them just continue at this point to be going, I don't really care. I'm going to continue following up this guy.

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Now, what's going to happen after October 21st? In all probability, you're going to have this massive splintering.

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I mean, this movement is rife to have people running in and gathering up followers for themselves.

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Remember that guy that was on the video, the live video feed, May 21st,

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May 20th, 21st, you know, and as the day is ticking on, he's changing his stories, he's going along.

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Well, I'm sure he'll pick up his followers and some other people pick up their followers. And these are people who have separated themselves from the church.

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They don't want anything to do with the church and they're just going to continue doing their thing. And it's a sad, sad thing to see.

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877 -753 -3341, pretty much caller driven program today. If you want 877 -753 -3341 or dividing .line

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via Skype, I have some stuff queued up, but I would really rather let you all comment on, you know, maybe the

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Radio Free Geneva's we were doing or other things. I do not know what next week's going to look like as far as schedule goes.

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I know that I will not be available on Tuesday or Wednesday. I just will not have Internet access during that proper time period.

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I will be in Alaska. I'm speaking at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals conference up there in Anchorage with Phil Johnson.

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And Phil and I always have fun when we get together and it should be entertaining.

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Last time I was up there, I was with Tom Askle and now I'll be up there with Phil Johnson.

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So it should be a wonderful time and it should be cooler than it is here in Phoenix.

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I will need to remember to bring at least a jacket or something I would imagine, even though, man,

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I just realized we weren't up there this time. This is when the sun don't go down in Alaska.

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I mean, right now. I mean, they're playing soccer games at 2 a .m. in the morning up there right now.

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This is when the Alaskans don't sleep. You heard about the game last night. What game? Apparently, there's an annual softball game that they play up there at midnight every year and unfortunately, they had to cancel it 45 minutes early because, well, it got cloudy.

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So they're going to pick it up tonight. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was up there, I think.

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I forget when it was that I was up there last, but it was 32 degrees in the morning. I saw this guy riding down the road in shorts and a t -shirt because for Alaskans, 32 is like sweaty.

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They're enjoying it. So anyway, I'll be up there for those in the Anchorage area, our huge listening audience in the

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Anchorage area. We will be up there this coming weekend and I look forward to seeing you there.

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I did want to mention one more thing, then we'll start taking our phone calls, 877 -753 -3341.

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Please feel free to join us and dividing .line via Skype.

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Twice I have received a question, both at the same church in Houston, and this individual asked me a question.

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I remember he asked me it privately, well, sort of privately, after I gave a talk on Islam a couple years ago.

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And then he gave it more publicly and I linked to my talks there in Houston.

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So you may hear my response to it. There are only a few times that I have responded to a question as strongly as I did both times that I was asked this question.

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And sometimes I feel badly about that, but sometimes there's a time to speak strongly.

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And what the gentleman asked me was, in essence, and now

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I know where this was coming from, and that's what surprises me, I just discovered where this came from.

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Basically what he asked was, I've read that the best way to deal with Islam would be to nuke the

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Kaaba, drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca and get rid of the

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Kaaba. That would end Islam. And I remember the first time he asked me this, we were just standing there after a conversation, like I said, after a presentation

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I had made. And I was like, and I think my response was, that's the stupidest thing

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I have ever heard. Now, I normally do not respond to even relatively stupid questions by saying that's the stupidest thing

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I've ever heard, but it was hard for me not to say it because I was like, who are you reading that would ever make such an incredible outlandish assertion?

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And then he asked again, this last time I was there just a few weeks ago, and I again very strongly said, you've got to be kidding me, whoever you're reading, stop reading this person because they don't understand anything.

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Well, I was just reading an article, and I wish there was a reference to this, and so I am going to say, this is on the internet.

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I'll be interested to see if it actually pans out as being accurate.

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But it is attributed to Dr. Robert Morey. And here's what it says.

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First, as I wrote in my book, How to Win the War Against Radical Islam, the war against the Muslim jihadists will be long and costly and will not be won until we bomb the

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Kaaba in Mecca. Islam is based on a brick and mortar building that can be destroyed.

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They pray to that building five times a day, make a pilgrimage to it, run around it, kiss a black rock on the wall, then run between two hills and finally throw rocks at a pillar.

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What if that building, the Kaaba, was destroyed? They could not pray to it or make a pilgrimage to it. The old pagan temple of the moon god,

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Al -Ilah, is the Achilles heel of Islam. Destroy it and you destroy Islam's soul. There is the quote.

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No reference is given. That bothers me that no reference is given.

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But since, obviously, this is floating around and people are reading it, may

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I comment briefly upon this assertion? First of all, no one who actually understands the

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Islamic theology believes that anyone is praying to the building.

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The black stone is what the Qibla points toward, not the building. The building has been torn down and rebuilt many times.

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The last time, within recent memory, just within the past 30 or 40 years. It's not the building.

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The building is not what is sacred. It is the black stone. And so, while you might destroy the black stone, the point is the

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Kaaba itself is not the focus. And so, there is a fundamental misunderstanding at that point.

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Was there an idol to a moon god in the Kaaba? Well, there were about 360 idols.

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Some stories say that there were even images of Jesus and Mary in the Kaaba. One story is that when

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Muhammad had the idols removed from the Kaaba, that he was asked about the images of Jesus and Mary and they weren't destroyed.

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They weren't kept there, but they were in the Kaaba. They weren't destroyed. That would be consistent with Surah al -Mahdi in many ways.

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But the point is, might there have been a moon god idol in the

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Kaaba? Well, I don't think there's any reason to think there wasn't. There was probably a sun god and stars and all sorts of other things.

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You've got 360 idols. You've got to come up with something for 360 idols. Is it true that the pilgrimages and the circumambulation, the loft going around, did they pre -exist

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Muhammad? They did. Did he make changes to those things? Yeah, like you have to wear clothes.

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But were they pagan ceremonies, pagan things prior to Muhammad?

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They were. The answer provided by Islam that these actually went back to Abraham and, at least in the traditional sources,

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Ishmael, and that the Kaaba was built by Abraham, and in traditional sources, Ishmael, as a place of worship,

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I don't think there's a meaningful shred of historical evidence of that. And the idea that, well,

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Muhammad was restoring something, please don't expect me to buy that. But that's the

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Islamic understanding. Now, is there some connection between the moon god and Allah?

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Well, not in Islamic theology. Might there have been people at one point in time that identified a god similar to Allah with the moon?

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Well, I'm sure there was. I mean, anybody who... The whole reason I've never bought into the moon god stuff is because it's a two -edged sword, and I have preached for a long time that you need to be consistent in the arguments that you're using.

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And the name El can be found in all sorts of pagan religions, just as it's found in the

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Hebrew Old Testament. So does that mean something? El, Elohim, must be interpreted within the context in which it was used.

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And just because a pagan used El or Elyon or even

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Elohim in a pagan context really means nothing, unless you're just trying to prove pure reliance and pure borrowing, which would be pretty difficult to do in regards to the

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Old Testament in light of the emphasis upon monotheism. And this is exactly what modern scholars are doing.

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This is one of the things I was arguing about when I did the long series in response to the LDS scholar just a few months ago.

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Actually, what, six, eight weeks, something like that, on the blog. So you have to be careful.

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And the question is, are Muslims bowing down to a moon god? Well, no, they're not bowing down to a moon god.

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They don't believe that Allah is a moon god and all the rest of that kind of stuff. So when it says, what if that building, the

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Kaaba, was destroyed? They could not pray to it. They're not praying to it. They're praying toward the black stone. Or make a pilgrimage to it.

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The old pagan temple, the moon god, Alilah, is the Achilles heel of Islam. Destroy it and destroy Islam's soul.

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Well, if those are the words of Robert Maury, then shame on Robert Maury. That does deserve one of the stupidest statements of all time identifications.

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There's just no question about it. You nuke the Kaaba and you create 1 .5

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billion radical Muslims. They don't need that.

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It could be rebuilt someplace else. It would unify them like nothing else in the world would ever unify them.

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It is the dumbest, stupidest suggestion I've ever heard anyone ever make at any time in my life. And if Robert Maury made it, shame on him.

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How dare he. What foolishness. But I don't know that he did.

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I would like to get some evidence that someone, in fact, somebody, I'll bet you dollars,

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Donut, somebody listening right now would be able to tell me. Okay, all right, thank you.

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But I still need a reference. I'm getting commentary from people who knew him that said he had said this many times.

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But I would like to see real documentary evidence, honestly, of something like that.

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Because I just am left stuttering at something like that.

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I truly am. Is Doc in channel? Yes, I am in channel.

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The great Turretin fan has given me a link.

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And this is live. And here is the statement. Dr. Robert Maury, Ph .D.,

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Islamic Studies. This is Faith Defenders. That's his website. And there is the exact quote.

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There it is. This is FaithDefenders .com slash news slash Osama bin Laden dot html.

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By Dr. Robert Maury, Ph .D., Islamic Studies. Not sure where that came from. But anyways, first I wrote my book.

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Yeah, there it is. The Old Pagan Temple of the Moon God. It's Achilles' heel of Islam.

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Destroy it and you destroy Islam. Well, okay. Thank you very much,

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Turretin fan. And there we have documentation. You might say, boy, you're really slow on this.

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I have never read anything that Robert Maury wrote on Islam. I just haven't.

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And I'll tell you why. Since it's out here now, let's go ahead and explain it. I listened to his debate with Shabir Ali.

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And I was mortified. Mortified by his behavior in that debate.

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I remember this was about 2005 because I was preparing to debate

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Shabir Ali. And I remember very clearly that the first time

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I listened, I was riding, what's Bell Road? When it goes around the mountain out there?

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Sun Valley Parkway. I was riding the Sun Valley Parkway. And I was way out the far end of it.

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And I was mortified. And I listened to it again a second time while riding South Mountain. And I just determined in light of what

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I heard in that debate, I'm not even going to invest my time to read, look, anything.

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I did have a friend tell me once that after my debate with, actually right before my debate with Shabir Ali, that he had contacted

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Dr. Maury and he said he wouldn't be attending because I would just be repeating his information anyway.

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Which is not the case. In fact, on Islam, the primary sources that I have relied upon, and some people might fault me for this, but the primary sources

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I have relied upon are all Islamic. I mean, it sort of bugs people. They ask me about such and such a book and such and such a book, and I go, haven't read it.

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I'm, you know, working through Bukhari or Muslim or reading Ibn Ishaq or, you know, getting stuff from Brill on the early canonization process of the

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Hadith literature and listening to various, you know, not only

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Shabir Ali, but others as well. And that's been the primary source.

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There are a couple of people that I do consider to know

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Islam like the back of their hands. And they may not be liked by the Muslims, but the

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Assyrian encyclopedia, Sam Shamoon knows Islam. He knows his sources.

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And that's, you Muslims, you don't like Sam, but you know why you don't like Sam? Yeah, sometimes Sam's in your face.

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He's more in your face than I am. There's no question about it. Assyrians and Scotsmen do not debate in the same way.

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But I love Sam. And Sam and I butt heads. We butted heads recently. We really did. But we still love each other, despite the fact that I don't always agree with how he says things.

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And I hope I have been somewhat of a moderating influence on him. But there is nobody who knows the sources like Sam Shamoon.

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And that's why you don't like him. Because you're not necessarily consistent in your use of those sources.

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You've got your little view, and he keeps poking holes in it. That's why you don't like him. That's all there is to it.

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Anyway. But the primary sources I've used, I've never used.

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Bob Moriarty. When I listened to that debate, I just went, eww, I don't like that.

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And the main thing I didn't like about it, and I've said this on the program, we played on the program. I didn't think I was going here today, but we'll get to the calls.

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Just a second, Mike and Gregory. We'll get to you in a second. And dividing .line via Skype, if you want to get on via Skype.

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What really bugged me, and it's bugged me again recently, and I guess that's why this probably has bubbled up subconsciously, and I ended up doing this.

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Actually, it was an RSS feed that I was just looking at my Google Reader, like I frequently do before the program, and there was this thing.

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And that quote was in it, and I went, wow, I didn't. I felt it was necessary, given that I have publicly said that's the dumbest thing

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I've ever heard, now that I know where it came from, to say something about it. It's just, I think it's, I'm not looking to get into a spitting fight with anybody, to be honest with you.

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But, and Bob Moriarty has sort of disappeared off the face of the planet as far as I can tell, but I'm sure that this will get some type of response.

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But what really bugged me about the Shabir Ali debate has been reinforced by recently, it was

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Sam that directed me to the recordings that have been posted of his debates with Jamal Badawi.

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And I really, really wish, Muslims out there who know that I can do respectful debates with you, that are meaningful and are communicative,

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I want to debate Jamal Badawi. I really do. I know he's not doing that much anymore, but if any of you have contact with him, would you let him know there's someone that he could do a meaningful dialogue with, a meaningful debate with, where he would not be treated the way he was by Bob Mori?

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Because I listened to the two debates that they did, and I just listened to them just recently. And the same issue came up in both of them.

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I guess the Badawi debates took place after the Shabir Ali debate did. Do you remember what the issue was,

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Rich, that I brought up? The thigh and the thing? You do remember. Yeah.

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Okay. Here's what happened. I should have queued all these things up. I actually have them on my Mac in the other room, but I didn't because I didn't think

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I was going to be discussing this. But, hey, it's live, and that's how it works. I don't remember how it came up.

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I know that Mori brought it up. But he claimed that in Sahih al -Bukhari, there is a text that says that while one of the companions of the

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Prophet was riding with the Prophet, that his clothing moved in such a way that he could see his...

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Now, I've looked this up. In fact, one of the first things I asked my

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Arabic tutor to do was to translate this for me and to show me the Arabic. It was one of the first things.

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I think it was the second or third week we got together years ago. And the

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Arabic and every printed edition I have ever seen... Now, Mori claims that he has a printed edition where this isn't the case.

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I have a hard time believing this. But, hey, typos happen. But the

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Arabic in my edition says that he saw the whiteness of his thigh.

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And it says it twice. And my Arabic tutor showed me the Arabic. The Arabic term is the same in both places.

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It's very clear. According to Bob Mori, it says he saw the whiteness of his thing.

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T -H -I -N -G. That is his sexual organ. Well, Shabir gets up.

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And, you know, I've come to know Shabir. I've debated Shabir four times now. And we've communicated about some other things, you know, like Eric Enkanter.

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And Shabir is a nice guy. And Shabir does behave in a particular fashion during debates.

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I mean, he's taken Christians apart in debate when they're not prepared. But he has never behaved in debate with me the way that Robert Mori debated in debate with him.

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Okay, let's put it that way. So, in other words, we have a Muslim who has behaved a whole lot better in his debates than I felt

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Bob Mori did against him. And he gets up, and you can just tell he's like, What on earth are you talking about?

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And he goes to the text. He says it's the same word. And here's the word. Well, Mori gets up, and he says,

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I don't speak Arabic, but I have an Arabic speaking, I have an Arabic expert in the audience.

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Does it say thing? And you can sort of, you have to turn it up real loud. Yes, it says thing. And it's like, what?

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And then he did the most amazing thing I've ever heard in a debate. And we've played it. We could go back.

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I've got this in my iTunes. I could play it. I almost feel like playing it.

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What's that? Yes, right. It's on the 24 -7. Just keep listening to Dividing Line for the next couple of months, and it will play through at some point in time.

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It may be 3 o 'clock in the morning, but it will play through. There's no two ways about it. He actually said,

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Now, if I said that I saw the blackness of Shabir's thing, what would you think

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I was saying? He said this in the debate. I played this. And I just about rode off the road.

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I could not believe this was happening. It was bad enough because he's wrong. W -R -O -N -G.

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He's wrong. But he would not back down on it. It was bad enough in the one debate.

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But what has blown me away is just a few weeks ago, I was pushing, pushing, pushing to get as many miles as I could to make my 9 ,000 for the year.

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And so I was doing these big, long rides. And so I listened to these two debates between Jamal Badawi and Robert Mori.

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And evidently, because this is such an easily documented error, the

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Muslims were passing out documentation on this, demonstrating he was wrong. And so guess what came up again?

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And if I recall correctly, I could be wrong about this. I think it came up in both debates because it was on one day, on two different topics.

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But once again, he would not back down. And I was watching the videos. And he even put up on the days of the old overheads, you know, he even put on the overhead a transparency.

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I would love to see that transparency. I could barely make it out. It was a 320x4. You know, this is a real small 320x240 screenshot type thing that I could get.

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You couldn't really make anything out on it. But I just could not believe that anybody would go to the mat.

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This was a hill to die on? And he was just simply wrong.

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W -R -O -N -G. And what bothers me is to hear him saying true things about who

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Christ is, at the same time combining it with this kind of stuff and the kind of behavior.

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Because what he kept complaining about with Jamal Badawi was, well, you know, he just gets up here and instead of giving a positive presentation, he just responds to my book.

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And I felt like saying, don't quote me, bro. I felt like I was experiencing once again, when

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I got up and I'm debating Dan Barker, I responded to Dan Barker's published position.

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That's what you do in a debate. Well, that's what Jamal Badawi did. He responded to the published position on the subject of the debate that was in print from Robert Mori.

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And Robert Mori spends the first five minutes complaining about ad hominem and all the rest of this stuff. You're not supposed to be doing this.

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And I'm like, it's your book. It's the position you enunciated. What do you expect him to do? I just, and so I just,

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I about rode off the road a few times and just went, okay, well, I have honestly tried as best

33:15

I can. No matter who I was debating, even when I debated Nader Ahmed, who is not really in this particular universe, okay?

33:23

I mean, it's a different plane of existence, you know? But even then,

33:29

I try to demonstrate in my behavior and in my interaction with the other person something that can be contrasted greatly with what

33:43

I saw in that. So anyways, you pulled the microphone over, and that normally means that you have a comment to make.

33:50

No, you don't have a comment to make? No, you don't have a comment to make. Okay, all right. So let me just say that thank you,

33:57

Turgeon fan, for pulling that up. But the idea of nuking the Kaaba is dumb.

34:04

It's based on a misunderstanding and is just simply the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.

34:10

And I've said that publicly before. Now I know where it came from, so I'm just trying to be consistent. And say, shame on you.

34:16

That was just... 877 -753 -3341. Let's shift topics a little bit.

34:23

Actually, I think what Mike has to say in PA might fit in here just a little bit.

34:29

Then we'll talk to Gregory. Let's talk to Mike. Hi, Mike. Hey, how are you doing? Doing good. Good.

34:36

Hey, this is a first -time call. And I have to say, based on my question, that is really dumb what you're talking about.

34:45

It's like people don't realize that it's the power of God and the salvation of the gospel. Oh, of course.

34:50

You want to see a Muslim change? Preach the gospel, and they'll get saved. If it's God's will, they will be saved. You don't go nuking them.

34:57

That's just totally stupid. I do want to say to you very quickly, I've been listening to your debates, and I never really understood the difference between presuppositional and what we would call the evidential apologetics.

35:12

But, man, I am so thankful for your ministry. Just a quick testimony.

35:18

I do jail ministry over here by Pittsburgh, and I was able to, based on what

35:26

I believe I've heard you do in debates before, one of the inmates we were going to... I wasn't planning on going to Romans 9 that evening with the inmates to talk about elections, but one of the inmates had asked them, you know, well, why doesn't

35:40

God, basically he said something to the effect of, why doesn't God save everybody? And I stopped him and said, I just want to say to you that you have a presupposition going into this, and it is that God would be evil if he didn't provide a way for everybody to be saved.

35:55

Is that what you're saying? Something to that effect. And he said, basically he said, yeah. And I credit the way the

36:03

Lord has used your ministry in my life with that. So thank you. Well, thank you, Mike.

36:08

I appreciate that. Definitely. Praise the Lord. My question, though, has to do on the same lines of what you're talking about right now.

36:16

I think you've really done some good work in exposing some of the misunderstandings that we

36:23

Christians can have about Islam, and I fear that I may have many misunderstandings, and one of them may have to do with the concept of moderate

36:32

Islam. Now, I'm sure you're very familiar with what other people are saying. I don't know if you've ever heard of a gentleman by the name of Robert Spencer at jihadwatch .org,

36:45

and then another gentleman who is a Christian, an Egyptian Christian by the name of Usama Dakdak. Yes, I think he's been on the

36:52

Aramaic Broadcasting Network. Yeah, he has. And I've listened to him, and I've read some stuff on Spencer's website, and I come away walking away from that with the idea that, and this could be totally my fault, so anybody who's listening, this could be totally my fault.

37:11

I don't want to drag anybody's name through the mud right now. But I've always come with the understanding that there's no such thing as a moderate

37:22

Islam that all Muslims are seeking to destroy every

37:29

Jew and Christian. And I even, there was a radio show out here in Pittsburgh, and they were taking comments on the mosque that was going to be built in Times Square, and they were asking the question, what do you think?

37:41

And a Christian woman had called in and said, well, I think it's great, and I think we should all go, and you know, the whole let's all tolerate by not standing for anything so we become spineless jellyfish.

37:51

And I called in, and I said, because she brought up the idea, well, Christians go bomb abortion clinics or something to that effect.

37:59

And I said, I called in and said, well, you've got to understand, the difference between Christians and Muslims in this regard is that when

38:05

Christians go and bomb abortion clinics, they're acting inconsistent with their beliefs. If a Muslim acts upon that, he's acting in consistency with what his text says.

38:14

Now, where I think I was wrong was I was depending on what other people had said, and I didn't say it for myself.

38:20

As soon as I got the phone, I was like, man, I wish I didn't say that. I wanted to get your opinion.

38:26

Is there such a thing? Because I listened to your debates with someone like Shabir Ali, and even the one I listened to wasn't the best quality, but it was out of London, and they were very respectful and seemed to be very genuine people.

38:40

So I just wanted to get your opinion on that. Well, this is a major, major issue. It's very, very important.

38:48

What needs to be understood is what we're talking about here is really an internal struggle within Islam itself.

38:57

It's a struggle that has historical roots. There was a time when

39:05

Islam produced a very flowering culture, a culture with great education and things like that, but that disappeared because a form of Islam overtook it that really cannot support that kind of intellectual endeavor.

39:22

What we need to understand is clearly in behavior and outlook, not all

39:30

Muslims want to immediately kill the kafirs, the unbelievers, because if that were the case, we'd have 1 .5

39:37

million people running around with bombs, and it obviously isn't that way.

39:44

There are many Muslims who simply want to live their lives, and they want to talk to others, and they want to live peacefully.

39:52

And the question is, are they being consistent? Now, the problem is part of this language has been forced on us by the news media and things like that.

40:02

And so you've only got two options, radicalized or moderate. Well, obviously, there's a whole lot more out there than those two areas can take into consideration.

40:16

It is fundamental Islamic doctrine that you have the

40:21

Dar al -Islam, the world where Islam is predominant, and then you have the

40:27

Dar al -Harb, the world of war. And that can be understood militaristically, or that can be understood spiritually.

40:41

What Osama bin Laden was saying in many ways has parallels in Christian theology.

40:49

I mean, he was saying, look, God made us in a certain way, he's revealed his law, mankind will never be happy until he's subjected to God's law.

40:56

And the big difference is not that, because we believe that. We believe that when people reject

41:01

God's law, that they're not going to experience his blessing, they're not going to experience true life, they're basically going against the owner's manual.

41:08

We may differ as to the nature of that law, but on those issues, we pretty much agree.

41:13

The difference is what you do about that. From our perspective, there is one means that God has given to fight that battle, and it's the gospel.

41:25

The gospel is the power of God and the salvation. It's what changes people's hearts. And you don't do that by getting armies together and invading countries and forcing people at the end of an

41:37

AK -47 to do something. And basically, Osama bin Laden was saying otherwise, and he even aimed that toward ostensibly nations that we would call

41:48

Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia and places like that, that were not being as consistently Taliban -ish as he would think that they need to be.

41:57

But on certain fundamental issues, there's wide swaths of agreement, and we need to be very, very careful when we start criticizing others when some of those agreements actually have parallels within what we believe.

42:10

Now, what we really need to understand is that in the world today, you have those who are arguing on one side from the

42:20

Islamic sources, from the Quran, from the Hadith. They pick their sources, and they say, look, you need to have a caliph before you can have a jihad.

42:32

Jihad is a state that is proclaimed by the Islamic caliph. There is no caliph. There cannot be jihad in the sense of actual physical battle.

42:43

There are others arguing from the same sources saying, well, the problem is we can't have a caliph because a hole is under attack.

42:51

There are people who have invaded our lands, and so they won't allow us to have a caliph. And so jihad exists whether we have a caliph or not.

42:58

And when jihad exists, these are the things we are to do. And there is an internal debate, and we would like to see those debating on one side to be victorious over the others.

43:08

But my big concern is that the sources themselves are not consistent enough for there to be a real clear victor.

43:17

So I don't mean to cut you off. People will quote verses from the

43:23

Quran. It seems like for both sides. Surah 929, etc.,

43:28

etc., right. I know. And they'll say, well, see, this says to slay the Jew and the

43:34

Christian wherever you find them. And there are certain Muslims who will say, but that had a specific historical context.

43:44

Here is what that historical context was. And there's all these other things you need to take into consideration that change the application of Surah 929.

43:54

There are other Muslims who say, I don't need to do all that. So in essence, what you have is the more simplistic, less complex, less in -depth interpretation is much easier to run with and much easier to preach than the one that says, well, you know, we've thought about these things since then, and there are these interpretations, and these things need to be brought into consideration.

44:22

It's a whole lot easier to get young Muslim men to ignore all that stuff and just string the verses together and say, here, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

44:32

And you've got 929, you've got these comments in the Hadith literature, and you string it all together, and yee -haw, let's go blow somebody up in Seattle.

44:40

You know, the guy that wanted to take the van and blow something up at the Christmas pageant. And he even did the phone and the whole nine yards.

44:47

And was that an overly complex interpretation of those materials that were given to him?

44:54

No, not really. They were pretty simplistic. It's basically like a lazy exegesis for pragmatic ends, would be one way to put it.

45:07

We're pretty familiar with that. Exactly. We've got the same kind of people who do that with the

45:12

Bible, unfortunately. But the problem is, where the parallel breaks down is,

45:19

I think there is a consistent interpretation of our source texts on these issues.

45:26

I don't think there's a consistent interpretation of their source texts. Their source texts are so wide.

45:32

And even in my debates with Muslims, I have, for example, with one particular

45:38

Muslim who does listen to the program, I brought up a hadith from Sahih al -Muslim that talked about how

45:46

Allah will substitute a Jew or a Christian for every

45:52

Muslim in regards to his sins on the Days of Judgment. Their being sent to hell frees the Muslim up from his sins.

45:58

Well, I know many Muslims who will look at that and they will accept the authority of that hadith.

46:05

But then others, like my opponent in this particular context, said, Ah, that was only narrated by one person.

46:11

So you see, you get to pick and choose your legal opinions and what sources you emphasize and do not emphasize.

46:18

And I can't tell you how many Muslims have said, Well, I don't think that's necessarily sound narration. And it becomes this massive argument that needs to continue on, but it is a massive argument internally to Islam at that point.

46:32

It's not completely analogous to say, well, like liberal versus conservative

46:38

Christian, the liberal pick -and -choose buffet style where the conservative will read the text. We would say the text is consistent with that itself.

46:47

But you're saying that... Yeah, it's not perfectly analogous because not only the text in the

46:56

Quran itself is much more difficult to interpret, but the hadith sources especially are so vast.

47:04

It's a little bit, if you really want a little closer analogy, it's a little bit closer to the Roman Catholics and their picking and choosing in regards to their source of traditions from the early church fathers.

47:15

Now you've got 38 volumes and you get to pick and choose. And very clearly they pick what they want and they reject what they want.

47:20

And that's what you end up having in these debates going on where they pick and choose and emphasize this and don't emphasize that.

47:26

And I just don't know that there is a real final position to be taken because the sources themselves are not consistent.

47:36

So there is moderate Islam. And there are people obviously who are not hiding in AK -47 under their geffiyah, if they could do that, just waiting to shoot you when they've got the opportunity to do so.

47:54

That's obvious because the world would be a very different place than it is if that's what was really going on.

48:01

The question is who is consistently representing Quranic early

48:07

Islam? And there are a lot of people who can point to what Muhammad did in the first hundred years of Islamic expansion and go,

48:14

I don't know, it's pretty obvious Muhammad only wanted one religion on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula after his death.

48:21

And so they've got their arguments, but the other side has their arguments too. And as long as the other side is still making their arguments,

48:27

I'm going to vote for them as far as at least allowing for some type of communication to take place.

48:37

Because if 1 .5 billion people on this planet all of a sudden all got united and said you all have to die, there would be a lot of bloodshed.

48:46

Oh yeah, we'd be in trouble. It would be a mess. No two ways about it.

48:52

Well, yeah, just... Real quick, because I've got a guy calling from St. Kitts we want to get to.

48:58

I was just going to say thanks, and real quick, are you still going to be in Ohio on September 9th and 10th?

49:04

Yes. Yes, I will be at the Wretched Radio event there.

49:11

I will be there, Lord willing, obviously. And I don't fall off a mountain or something like that, but that is definitely on the schedule.

49:19

And really enjoyed my last time with Todd, looking forward to it. It seems so long in the future when

49:25

I was with Todd, and now it's going to be coming up real quick. So look forward to seeing you.

49:32

All right, praise the Lord, brother. All right, thanks a lot. Take care. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. All right, so now let's shift gears and talk with Gregory down in St.

49:41

Kitts. Hi, Gregory. Good day, Dr. White. How are you, sir? I'm all right.

49:46

What about you? I'm doing real well, thank you. Good. First of all, there are a lot of things

49:52

I would like to speak about. First of all, what I'm calling to speak about is that on YouTube, I came across a song called

50:00

Mission Accomplished. By Shilin. By Shilin. You're familiar with it?

50:06

I am. Very, very good. Very good. Well, I would like to ask you, because I have never ever heard a song or a hymn or anything like that, that has been so explicit in defending the limited atonement.

50:23

And one of the things I would like to speak with you about is, what is your take on this song?

50:31

Well, I don't have it up. It's been a while since I've listened to it, but I'm very appreciative of the fact that there has been a growing group of young men who seek to honor

50:46

God in that field of music. I know a number of these fellows.

50:55

I've had contact with Lecrae and Tadashi and Javon McKenzie and others.

51:02

As a fact, a couple of them are now starting to put some of my comments into their albums. So there have been some songs that have included me in it.

51:11

So I'm honored by that. I've had brief email correspondence with Shilin, and it does seem that he is very focused upon being very, very careful concerning the nature of the theology that he is putting into his music.

51:32

Now, they probably all know I'm a little bit more on the, let's just say about the most radical music taste

51:42

I have, go back to Keith Green, okay? Late 1970s, early 1980s, you know?

51:50

And so I'm more of a Beethoven, Bach, and maybe some big band.

51:56

You know, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, okay? So it's not something that I listen to with regularity, but I will listen to songs and I will listen to the words.

52:09

And for me, obviously, when I can understand, when it's spoken slowly enough that my almost 50 -year -old ears and brain can figure it out.

52:20

I mean, sometimes Lecrae will go so fast that I have to put it into my iPod and put it on slow.

52:25

Just so I can figure it out. But, you know, it's a growing field, and since it's growing, there unfortunately are growing pains and some controversies that have come up and things like that.

52:43

But I'm very thankful that there are young men who are concerned about the gospel and concerned about communicating the gospel clearly and with clarity and putting good, sound theology in.

52:57

So I'm excited about it. I know that a lot of my fellow Reformed Baptists probably, you know, the

53:05

Trinity hymnal and rap, it's hard to mix the two together, you know?

53:11

But I think there's an area of ministry there.

53:17

And, you know, I would pray for these young men as they seek to mature and as they seek wisdom in how to pursue this.

53:26

Because I think one of the big problems here is where do they do this?

53:33

I mean, a lot of Reformed churches just wouldn't see that as fitting into the regulative principle in any way.

53:42

And so where do they do this? And before whom? And how do they get their message out?

53:48

And are there going to be some who focus primarily just upon Christians? Are there going to be others who are looking to go out into a broader audience?

53:56

And do you view this as worship? Do you view this as evangelism?

54:02

Can you mix the two? What's the difference going to be between them? All sorts of issues like that that I think need to be worked through in a very humble and forthright way.

54:17

Yes, well, personally I would just say, if you get a chance, maybe you could play it for your listeners one of these days.

54:24

I mean, I've never, ever come across a song that has been so explicit in a limited atonement.

54:31

I'm trying to remember if I did, to be honest with you, I might have...

54:37

We played Lecrae. But I lied. Okay, all right. I might have...

54:43

Yeah, I will. I mean, I know exactly what you're talking about. And we could examine the words and stuff like that.

54:52

And I'd love if Shailen would be willing to come on, to have him on to talk about it.

54:58

Yeah. I have his email address, so I could drop him a line and say we've had international callers who would like to...

55:08

Yeah, definitely. Because right now I'm looking, okay, there's a post on YouTube, and it has the lyrics with it, so you can read the lyrics with the song on YouTube.

55:17

But secondly, two more quick questions I would like to ask you. Sure. There's a video documentary in the

55:23

Bible called A Lamp in the Dark, the untold story of the

55:28

Bible. Yes, I've seen parts of it. It's horrifically biased. Yeah, because I was going to ask you your opinion, because in the end, they said that I think

55:38

Westcott and Hart wasn't what it is. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, it's a

55:45

King James only. There was one, there's two of them that have similar names, and I was thinking of the one that included

55:50

John Dominic Cross and stuff like that. But are you talking about the King James only one? Yes, yes.

55:55

Yeah, yeah. Can you please explain to me? Okay, they wanted to say that Westcott and Hart was influenced by Roman Catholicism, and so the

56:08

U .S .B. or something like that was influenced by Roman Catholicism. So I think the

56:14

U .S .B., you call it, is really a Roman Catholic influencing via Westcott and Hart.

56:19

Right, right. I would like you to explain that part. And secondly, do you know of any video documentary on the history of the

56:26

Bible that you would recommend? Can you please explain those two questions? I don't on the second, because it's just not something

56:33

I really look into very much, to be honest with you. There may be stuff out there. There may be some good, solid stuff, and it's just not something that I'm looking into regularly.

56:42

Some folks might suggest some stuff. I'm not sure. I'm searching.

56:49

Yes, I understand. As to the other, I have addressed this issue. One place you might hear me addressing this issue that we make available is my quote -unquote debate with Dr.

57:01

D .A. Waite from 1994. Yeah, I have it. Okay, yeah. And we went over some of the Westcott and Hart stuff there.

57:07

I did in my book on the King James Only Controversy. Westcott and Hart were not

57:14

Baptists, and they were not as conservative as I might be, but they were significantly more conservative than they are often being presented.

57:24

And many people commit the genetic fallacy. They will, for example, misquote a section about one of them visiting a shrine of Mary or something, and they won't quote the rest of what he said about the superstition that offended him about Mary and so on and so forth.

57:40

Unfortunately, I've been able to document people misquoting those things and quoting them out of context to try to exaggerate.

57:49

But if they want to get into trying to create genetic fallacies and saying, Oh, well, these people are influenced by Roman Catholicism.

57:54

Well, there was, in Anglicanism, an influence along those lines, the via media.

58:01

But does that not mean that Desiderius Erasmus, who originated the TR, was likewise influenced by Roman Catholicism?

58:08

Since he was a Roman Catholic priest who wrote in defense of transubstantiation, does that mean the

58:14

TR is not, therefore, influenced by Rome? You have to be very careful.

58:19

But, hey, Gregory, thank you very much for your call today. We're out of time. I appreciate you staying on the line, and it's great to hear from you again.

58:26

God bless. Thank you. Bye -bye. All right. Great program today in the sense of the calls.

58:33

I went a direction I never—isn't it amazing? You sit down here and have no earthly idea what trouble you're going to get yourself in.

58:42

But I think we were just trying to be consistent. Like I said, next week, just watch the blog. I'll let you know we're going to be able to work something out.

58:48

See you then. God bless. 1

59:32

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59:41

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