Two Part Dividing Line

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First half I discussed the New Mexico State Supreme Court’s decree demanding Christians compromise their faith (but, of course, not calling for homosexuals to compromise anything at all) as the “price of citizenship” in this fine and upstanding secular nation. Then moved back to responding to Yusuf Ismail’s opening statement in preparation for the trip to South Africa.

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line. And right as we started off,
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Dr. Mohler tweeted, he says, oh, how I enjoyed my 48 hours of black
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Camaro coolness. It fit in perfect in Amish country, don't you think? And there's a link to this picture of this beautiful Chevy, black
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Chevy Camaro that obviously was his rental car while he was in Amish country. It does.
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Yeah. I see Amish in Camaros all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, where was
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I? I was on Long Island once when they didn't have the, I don't know what kind of a car it was that I had signed up for.
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And so they said, well, take anything over there. And that's where they had the nice Mustang.
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And I'll be honest with you though, that was like, I forget what year it was, but I was under impressed.
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It just seemed really tinny, didn't seem like it was made real well. But it looked cool.
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There's no two ways about that. Well, I'm not going to even start into the
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Ford versus everything else arguments that everyone wants to get into at that particular point. I'm not going to go there.
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All right. Well, you know, I did make a good faith effort to at least get a blog up on this.
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And, um, finally today I was really, really surprised, speaking of Dr.
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Mueller, that it took till today, uh, for the good doctor on the briefing to comment on what happened last week with the
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New Mexico state, uh, Supreme court. Well, the technical term is decision.
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I, I struggle a little bit to utilize that language, tradition, uh, tradition, uh, decision in light of the fact that, um, these are not decisions based upon an analysis of constitutional law any longer.
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They are, they are decrees produced by justices who see themselves free to utterly overthrow the foundations of culture and this nation and, and to completely ignore, uh, what the founding fathers would have, um, believed or done and things like that.
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So it's not, it's not people sitting around and making decisions. It's, it's people sitting around and changing things, uh, by a divine fiat basically.
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But anyway, uh, Dr. Mueller did comment this morning rather fully. He had written a blog article yesterday and, uh, then commented rather fully on the briefing today.
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I posted my blog last week. Uh, Doug Wilson has weighed in a number of people have weighed in on what
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I think is one of the most amazing legal developments.
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And I think that we will see literally a tsunami, uh, sometime a couple of weeks ago, someone linked, uh, some of the videos of the
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Japanese tsunami. There's been a number that I had not seen even back when it actually happened. Uh, and it was just, just amazing to watch this.
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It's what started as a little trickle, just a, a small little wave up a river, uh, soon everything in its, in its path has been washed away and we don't, we're, we're past the little trickle stage.
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We're to the pretty full river stage and pretty soon it's going to be coming over the river banks and, um, we are going to see a tsunami of these kinds of decisions, these kinds of activist judges.
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And in this case, this kind of simple anti -Christian bigotry that will be expressed with the approval of the mainstream media and the governmental leaders, uh, is, it is here, it is to be expected and here it comes now.
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Now, uh, it was Doug Wilson who I think really expressed, uh,
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I had, I had said toward the end of, of my, uh, discussion that, um, in other words, the cost of citizenship in post -revolutionary, post -Christian, post -constitutional
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America, bow to Caesar, say Caesar is Lord rather than Jesus is Lord, celebrate evil with us or pay the price.
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Celebrate evil with us or pay the price because that's, that's what this is about. A wedding photographer is not just someone who hides in a corner and snaps a few shots.
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You have to get people together. You have to, they're a part of the, of the proceedings.
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They, they have to engage in what's going on and they're trying to use their artistic abilities to present this, uh, this wedding in such a way as to, um, as to recommend it to others and to celebrate it.
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They're part of the proceedings. And what happened in this case, if you've been living under a rock someplace,
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I can't imagine there's almost anybody who's not aware of this now, but what happened in this case is the state of New Mexico does not have same sex marriage, does not have legal same sex marriage.
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Not yet, will soon, I'm sure. But two lesbians came to a
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Christian photographer and tried to hire them to photograph their celebration, their quote marriage, quote wedding, quote whatever.
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And they were not, and it would not have mattered if it had, they, they, they,
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I, I, I have said for many, many years that homosexuals, it's not the fervor of your disagreement.
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It is the fact of your disagreement. And they were declined.
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They weren't thrown out on their ears. They weren't yelled at. They weren't, the photographer just said,
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I can't, that's against my beliefs. I can't do that. They were not the only photographers in town.
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They got other photographers to do it at a lower price than the
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Christian photographers. And then they did their thing and they had their faux marriage and it'll always be a faux marriage and it won't be long before you can't say that.
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Because again, the, the demand is that you not just tolerate, you have to celebrate.
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You must say it's good. You must say it's right. You can't say anything else. Doesn't matter what your faith says.
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Doesn't matter if, if you have to identify every president of the United States until the current one is a bigot, totally overthrow the consensus of the culture for hundreds of years, thousands of years, actually, if you want to go to all of Western culture.
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But anyway, they did their thing. And then afterwards, clearly as an act of activism to punish the
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Christians, they filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission. Now, if you haven't kept track of Human Rights Commission's abuses in Canada, they are the primary source of persecution of Christians.
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They're the primary source of the most absurd, ridiculous, outrageous violations of common sense in Canadian history.
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And now we've got them, you know, it's like a disease. It's spread. You know, we've got a common border.
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So it's spread. So it's not that they didn't get their little get together photographed.
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They did. This was retribution. This was punishment. And so far, they've succeeded.
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So far, they've succeeded. Now, of course, they were able to do this because the
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New Mexico state legislature, in all of its awesome wisdom, had already bought into the fundamental lie that sexual behavior is the same thing as skin color.
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That sexual behavior is a civil right. Now, people buy into these things because their favorite
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Hollywood stars say they should, not seemingly realizing that as soon as you have enough pinheaded psychologists to get together and write enough papers to change certain diagnostic manuals, then polyamory and bestiality and pedophilia and all the rest of these things that already
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I could right now point you to half a dozen sources for every one of them where already the papers are being produced, already the arguments are being made.
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This is how we're made. This is how we're hardwired. Every single element of the homosexual arguments being used by them.
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And since it's been bought hook, line and sinker for other reasons. There is no logical reason to withstand that onslaught as well.
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And so they put into law the idea that you cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
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You cannot make decisions. That's what discrimination is. You cannot make a decision as to what you're going to do on the basis of that.
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And we've talked many times about the utter abuse, the term discrimination. The fact that people just they'll use words and not even think about what they mean.
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They will use words. I even think about how they violate their own standards.
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Everybody discriminates every single day. Every person who went to McDonald's today instead of Wendy's discriminated against Wendy's.
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How dare you? If you wore blue today. Then you discriminated against your red clothes, you bigot.
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The fact of the matter is we all discriminate every single day. It's the basis upon which we discriminate that is the issue.
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This law said you cannot discriminate. And that's what it continues to say. And so what that means is you have no personal religious freedoms that can get in the way of being someone demanding that you celebrate the goodness, the propriety, the morality of that which you find to be utterly reprehensible and a violation of everything it means for you to be a
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Christian, especially when we're talking about marriage. Something honored by Christ, the
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Cane of Galilee, taught upon by Christ and violated regularly by every person who says that two men, two women, one man, three women, three women, one man, one woman and one dog, whatever, can be called a marriage.
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The mindset of these justices now, unrighteous judges are a plague upon a land.
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And I was going to mention what Doug Wilson said. Doug Wilson nailed it. He said, do you think that there will be lawsuits designed to make them stop that form of testimony?
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You bet there will be, because the point is to force us all to approve.
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This homosexual agenda knows what their endgame is. They will not rest until they are surrounded with the sounds of mandatory and universal applause.
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They will not rest until they are surrounded with the sounds of mandatory and universal applause.
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And how have I explained that in the past? These are individuals, create the image of God, who are suppressing that knowledge.
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They are perverting and twisting the creator -creation relationship. Every single day, their conscience testifies to that.
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It has to be torture to be continuously attempting, putting out the mental energy, spiritual energy, to try to retranslate that condemnation to something that's good, something that's affirming.
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And as a result, it's bad enough that they have to suppress this.
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What's worse for them is when there's anybody out there at all, anyone out there at all that they know, just even in their minds, are saying, that's wrong.
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That's wrong, and you know it's wrong. And so the uber rights for which they push are an expression of Romans chapter one.
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They want to silence all opposition, take away all freedom to say that this is evil.
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And they will not rest until they are surrounded with the sounds of mandatory and universal applause. That's exactly right, exactly right.
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Now, it is truly amazing to read the comments provided at the end of the decree by Richard C.
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Bosson, one of the justices of the New Mexico Supreme Court. I provided them to you, went to the
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PDF, pulled it off the New Mexico Supreme Court website, quoted it for you.
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But I want you to listen. This is just that first wave.
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It will be followed with such a drumbeat and such a regularity that we will not even have time to comment upon in the future.
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And the result will be the marginalization of Christians. They want us out of the public sphere.
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They want us out of places of influence. And it's going to happen here in the
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United States of America. We may be looking at moving to Russia and places like that where we have more religious freedom than we have here.
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I mean, today, I just realized I don't think I have this in my pocket account.
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But I know I saved it to pocket. I wonder why that didn't show up. Anyways, I happen to see something about some hockey player.
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I think it was. Who refused to criticize Russia for passing a law that says you're not allowed to promote non -traditional sexual relationships to minors.
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And his response was, look, I'm Orthodox. What else can I say? That's all he said.
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And he was attacked for just for not getting on the bandwagon. Everybody's got to get on bandwagon and just you've got to be
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Orthodox, not Orthodox as in Eastern Orthodox. You've got to be Orthodox as in our culture's orthodoxy.
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And that is homosexuality is a wonderful thing. You should be able to promote to anybody. Little kids should be forced to deal with homosexuality from the time they're in kindergarten on.
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That's that's the dogma of our society. That's the perversion and it is perversion and it's a perversion that will bring judgment upon this nation.
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There is no question about it. How long God will allow that,
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I don't know. But the judgment's already coming, we see it, it's part of the judgment itself.
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Anyways, back to the words, he says, there is a lesson here.
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I love justices today. You know, they take the paternal attitude there.
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There is a lesson here in a constitutional form of government, personal, religious and moral beliefs when acted upon to the detriment of someone else's rights have constitutional limits.
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Now, ask yourself a question all the way through this. How come none of this applies to the homosexuals?
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I don't even think he ever thought about this. I don't I have I do not see the slightest bit of evidence.
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That this justice ever even gave thought to the fact that these words would have to be logically applied.
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To these two homosexuals who are clearly engaging in activism. And that his words would apply far better to them than to the
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Huguenins, the Christians who have been dragged through this for years now. Think about it.
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Don't their freedoms have constitutional limits? Do you really think the founding fathers of this land intended for Christian people to be forced to celebrate sexual perversion?
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What law school did you go to where you were taught that? The one that taught you that it doesn't matter what they believed, it doesn't matter what the background of the original words are.
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It's what you can do with them today. That's the law school. That's the way of thinking.
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One is free to believe, think and speak as one's conscience or God dictates.
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But when actions even religiously inspired conflict with other constitutionally protected rights, then there must be some accommodation.
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So homosexuals have the right to force Christians to celebrate the goodness of their unions, even though we can directly show that Jesus taught otherwise, even though we can directly show that he taught that it's one man and one woman together.
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That's what marriage is. It's been that way from the beginning. It is now a constitutionally protected right to pervert the very foundations and institutions upon which this nation was originally founded.
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There you go. In section 89, we have the full acceptance.
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Just it's in law now. The full acceptance of the argument that homosexual orientation and skin color race are absolutely equal.
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You can't even question it. Can't discuss it. And as with the arguments before the
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Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, only a number of months ago in regards to DOMA, the one thing that is absolutely, positively absent and has to be absent from any cultural discussion, legal discussion of this subject from now on is any element of morality.
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You cannot call homosexuality an evil. It can't be considered.
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It can't be brought in. That's just it. It's a good thing. It's a good thing.
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And that's why we cannot win this battle until this society is either broken down by God's judgment and there is repentance because this is evil.
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It is evil to call that which is evil good. And so if we're at the point where in the legal system itself, in the highest forms of government, in the highest courts, you can't even call that which is evil, evil, you have to call that which is evil good.
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Well, that is a society that has been given over. That's a society that's been given over.
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And so the only solution to that is repentance. That's the only thing we can call for.
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But there's no discussion at all about right and wrong, evil, anything in this, anywhere.
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So Section 90 says, all of which I assume is a little comfort to the
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Huguenins, who are now compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.
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Though the rule of law requires that the result is sobering, it will no doubt leave a tangible mark on the
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Huguenins and others of similar views. When the rule of law itself becomes immoral, it loses all meaningful moral weight, and the only way to enforce it is by force.
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You see, in a blessed country, the law represents God's law.
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It represents His will, and therefore it carries the weight of conscience with it. What it says is wrong is wrong because God says it's wrong and we know it's wrong in our hearts.
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But once a nation becomes so perverted that law no longer has a moral element to it, it is capricious, it is backwards, it's calling what we know is good evil and what we know is evil good, then the only way it can be enforced, the only way it can be enforced is by the force of a police state.
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History tells us these things. That's one of the reasons why part of the process of breaking down Western culture has been to pervert history and to make the vast majority of American citizens, especially those that are voting today of younger age, utterly ignorant of their history, of the history of the world, history of nations, history of philosophy, history of ethics, morality, etc.,
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etc. That's why we can, with such amazing speed, identify the generations that came before us as a bunch of Neanderthalic bigots without even batting an eye and then going right back to sticking our earbuds in our ears and listening to rappers like Macklemore, who are our ultimate moral guides.
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So here's the admission. We are going to compel you by law to compromise your religious beliefs.
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We are going to make the rights of lesbians to force you to celebrate and participate in their sexual perversion more important than religious freedom in the
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United States of America. That's what this man just said. That's what he just said. And he seems to know it.
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Though the rule of law requires it, the result is sobering. And so he says on a larger scale, section 91 of the decree, this case provokes reflection on what this nation is all about.
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Yeah, it sure does. It sure does. And it really makes you wonder what's the foundation of any nation.
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You know, these guys have to have been forced to read the Federalist Papers and things like that. They have to have seen the constant references to religious morality and Christianity therein.
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But I guess as long as your professors just ignore it, I guess you can too. It's promise of fairness, liberty, equality of opportunity, and justice.
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Oh, yeah, nothing about religious freedom in there. Something about pilgrims. Yeah, remember pilgrims?
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Yeah, right, right at the beginning. Yeah. Not relevant anymore. At its heart, this case teaches that at some point in our lives, all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others, except for homosexuals.
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Did he even think about that? Did he even think about that?
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Why not say to this homosexual couple, um, did you get your wedding thing photographed?
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You did? At even a better price, huh? Then what are you doing? Trying to force
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Christians to celebrate? Oh, no, no, no, because that's the new dogma, the new orthodoxy.
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It's real clear, real obvious. Everybody else gets to compromise. Everybody else gets to stand, because that's what they want.
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They want, they live for. The rest of us are trying to live our lives, trying to do other things.
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That's what they live for. So at its heart, this case teaches at some point in our lives, some of us, not all of us, must compromise to accommodate the contrasting values of others, and especially to accommodate anything that homosexuals demand of us.
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The Huguenins are free to think, to say, to believe as they wish, but they are not free to act as they wish in accordance with their own beliefs.
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That's not what he says. He says the Huguenins are free to think, to say, to believe as they wish. They may pray to the
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God of their choice and follow those commandments in their personal lives, wherever they lead. The Constitution protects the
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Huguenins in that respect and much more, but there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life.
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Do you hear, do you hear this? Here is the government saying, all right,
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Christians, up till now you have had religious freedom in the entire aspect of your experience.
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You could live consistently with your faith in the civic sphere as well, but not anymore.
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Not anymore. It's changed, changed fast, but it's changed. They're these people, see, and they have more rights than anyone else.
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They have to be protected. There is only 3 % of them in the entire population, but they are the standard of what it means to be an
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American today, and you cannot offend them. You must celebrate them.
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You must celebrate them, and if you won't, then you don't get to participate in the civic life of the country.
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If you're a photographer, don't get to exercise those gifts. No, no, no, no, no, you can't do that because this is business, see.
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You're providing public accommodation, and therefore, you cannot offend this one group.
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They are special. You can be offended. It's okay to be offended. You can be dragged through court.
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You can be, you can have your finances ruined because you're a Christian. It's okay. Homosexual?
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Never, no longer, can't do it. So you have to sever,
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Christian, you have to sever your civic life and just keep that Christianity stuff, keep that private.
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Y 'all can go over in your enclaves, but you cannot live consistently with what you say out here with the rest of us.
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We have a higher authority out here. Caesar has spoken. Offer the pinch of incense.
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Say Caesar is Lord. Out here, because remember, remember what happened in Rome? Not only did you have to offer the incense, not only have to offer the incense and say
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Caesar is Lord, but remember once you did that, you were given a libelus, a libelus, and what was the libelus for?
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The libelus showed that you had paid your due, you had offered sacrifice, and therefore, what could you do?
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Engage in commerce, engage in commerce, be involved in public accommodation.
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But you had to prove that you had offered your sacrifice. You had paid the price of citizenship.
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And so it really, really makes you sit up and take notice. The last section, in the smaller, more focused world and marketplace of commerce, of public accommodation, the
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Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other
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Americans who believe something different. Not the Americans who are homosexuals. They don't have to worry about any of this. It's irrelevant to them.
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They've got super rights. The rest of us don't. They have been elevated. They're protected. We are their saviors.
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That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation. Oh, I, I, gosh, I thought it was a common commitment to the rule of law and morality and ethics.
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Silly me. The tolerance that lubricates the very moving parts of us as a people, except it only goes one way, it's, it's a kind of lubricant that only works.
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You know, I've been using the same stuff called absolutely the best chain lubricant for years and years and years.
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I just put a new chain on one of my bikes. You know, you only get about 4 ,000 miles at most out of a chain.
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Did you know that? I bet you did not know that. Some of you are riding around. You wonder why your bike sounds so terrible. It's because you got that chain is so stretched out.
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It'll never ever work again and it's ruining your gears. So just change your chain. Anyway, I decided to use a new super duper scientific, cool, new, modern, whatever lubricant on a new change.
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I just put on my best road bike so far. It's working real well. Very quiet. Very good. I like it anyway. It's like having a lubricant on your chain that only works when you're pedaling forward, not when you're pedaling backwards.
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Only goes one way. That's this lubricant of the society. It only works, Christians, this lubricant works when we compromise, but there is no necessity.
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It doesn't work when those other folks have to compromise. Nope. Nope. Not allowed. Not allowed. That sense of respect we owe others.
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What respect, by the way, did these homosexuals show the Huguenins? Zip. None. Not a bit.
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That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not we believe as they do, or how about behave as they do, illuminates this country, setting it apart from the discord that afflicts much of the rest of the world.
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And here's, here's the final line, folks. There's a final line. In short,
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I would say the Huguenins, with the utmost respect, it is the price of citizenship.
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There it is. It's the price of citizenship. It was just a little pinch of incense.
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That's all it was. I mean, there were, there were a lot of people call themselves Christians that were willing to do it.
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They, it's like, look, I've got, I've got to, I've got to take care of my family. I've got a business.
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I'm supporting missionaries with this. If I don't get the Libulus, I can't do all those things.
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So it's, it's no big deal. It's the price of citizenship. And so the state has said to the
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Huguenins, the price of citizenship, it's real simple, compromise.
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And what's the form of that compromise? Celebrate the perversion of sexuality and the profaning of Christian marriage.
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What can we say? Obviously, as I said, this is just the start.
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Now, I noticed that Dr. Moeller did indicate there was the possibility of appeal to the
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United States Supreme Court. Now I don't know about you, but that seems like these days, that's like, well, is that really going to do anything?
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Because as far as I can see, the idea of interpreting the Constitution of the
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United States in light of what it was intended to mean in the worldview in which it was written, et cetera, et cetera, is a thing of the past.
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It just doesn't happen anymore. And so what, what good would it accomplish?
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I mean, we just saw what happened with DOMA. We know that there are 4 .75 justices on the court that are unthinking ideologues.
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I mean, they're just, it's just, it's just a given what they're going to do. If it's, if it's, you know, going to continue to promote this type of judicial activism and the undercutting of the society and the promotion of this kind of immorality and lawlessness and godlessness, they're just, they're on it, man, they're just, they're there.
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And they're going to be there for decades. So would that almost be just making sure that it happens to all 50 states very quickly?
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I think it's going to happen one way or the other. You have to go one way or the other.
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I don't know. I don't know. But it really, you know, obviously the first people that are directly, directly impacted here is any
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Christian who works in the public sphere and offers a service to the public.
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So if you love to take pictures and you're a photographer, every single
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Christian photographer in the land knows that when someone comes in now, the first thought across their mind has to be, what are they going to ask me to do?
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And I was, we were discussing in channel, and I believe someone said in Ireland, there's a case going on very similar to that where, again, the whole issue is, can
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Christians be forced to engage in business activities that would fundamentally compromise their faith?
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Now, if you want to see the end result of all this, you know, look at how, look at Christians in Pakistan. Look at Christians under Islam.
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There's, there's, there's a ceiling. They can only go so high. They're only allowed certain jobs in those cultures.
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And that's, that's to keep them poor and out of places of influence and things like that. A great model from the secularist mindset.
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Let's do that with Christians as well. And it's not just photographers.
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It's anyone who engages in business. And, of course, you know, people say, well, this is just business, people.
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It's not like forcing the church to do something. And yet, and I don't know why it didn't come up, I had a whole article on how many churches are changing their bylaws and the nature of marriage now in anticipation of the possibility of being sued.
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And we all know in the United Kingdom, in light of the very recent passage of the profaning of marriage in the
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United Kingdom, immediately, an extremely wealthy homosexual has filed suit in the court system to force the
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Church of England to perform his wedding in the church. So there you go.
39:41
There you go. It's a coming, it's a coming. You know, you ought to just open up your, your recorder, record all of the wayback machine and hide it on a hard disk someplace, because I don't know how long we'll be here.
39:57
That's just all there is to it. It's going to be sneaking around back doors in the
40:03
Internet someday in the future is about the only way you're going to be able to get the word out, because concept of freedom, religious freedom, just ain't going to cut it, ain't going to cut it.
40:16
All right. Well, I actually heard about that case.
40:22
I mean, the case had been going for years. We all, I would hope, had all heard about it going on for years now.
40:30
And I got the word about the decision as I was sitting down on the plane between Denver and Tulsa as I was flying out on Thursday.
40:45
And I would very much like to thank Pastor Derek Melton and Pastor Josh McClellan, the pastors of the two churches that cooperated having me in.
40:58
It was a wonderful weekend. I'm going back next year. We have plans within plans.
41:07
And Josh McClellan was one of my students at Golden Gate. And I think you sort of have a special bond to your first year
41:20
Greek professor, because he's just, you know, it's sort of like the Stockholm syndrome.
41:26
You end up, you end up binding to the people that kidnap you and torture you. And I think the same thing happens with, especially in seminary
41:34
Greek, other kinds of, it's not so bad in college, but seminary
41:42
Greek is way too fast. And it's, it's tough. But anyhow, I had a great time there.
41:50
And in fact, I was sent a picture, Pastor Melton sent me a picture. And I guess their church has this wonderful opportunity.
42:02
And again, who knows how long this will happen, but there's a program there. Pastor Melton is the assistant chief of police.
42:11
Everybody in that entire congregation almost is a cop. It's really weird. But they work with at -risk youth.
42:22
And he was telling me that what they wanted me to do, see, on Friday night,
42:28
I did my New Testament reliability presentation, sort of a short version of it, didn't have a lot of time.
42:37
And so I did that and they really enjoyed it.
42:42
But what Pastor Melton had said was, on Sunday morning, we'd like you to do a presentation on the reliability of the
42:50
Bible for our young people. These, he calls them kids, but most of them were,
42:55
I'd say it was be 14 to 17. So you're not talking young kids. You're talking at -risk youth here.
43:01
And I'm like, okay, well, you know, I can try to dial back some of the detail and stuff and, you know, do what
43:07
I can. Well, at a certain time, all of a sudden the doors come open and here these folks come and the guys sit on one side and there are much fewer girls sit on the other side and they're all in these red t -shirt uniforms.
43:21
They've got water canisters on their sides.
43:28
You got a hat on it. It's sort of a uniform type thing. All the guys, I joked with them,
43:33
I said, thank you very much for honoring me with your hairstyles. It's a buzz cut,
43:38
Marine cut type thing. And when they stood to ask questions, they stood in a parade rest and, sir, yes,
43:47
I mean, it's one of those types of programs where it's very, you know, very much modeled on a military type thing.
43:54
And so I did my, I did part of the New Testament reliability presentation and then
44:03
I took questions and some fascinating questions. I mean, the last question I took was obviously from a young Roman Catholic fellow who asked, do you believe that we can pray to Mary and the saints and receive benefits from them?
44:17
And, you know, he stands there at, you know, sort of at this, you know, his hands behind his back like this, you know, and I have to somehow answer this in a brief but understandable way.
44:28
And it was, it was, it was fascinating. So I had never had to try to, you know,
44:36
I've said many times, if you want to know, if you really know a subject, teach it to the kids, you know, there's folks who can sit around seminaries and use all their seminary ease to talk about stuff, but they can't translate that into the real world and make it understandable to normal human beings.
45:00
But it's a real challenge to take something like that presentation and make it understandable to folks who have zero background whatsoever in what you're talking about.
45:12
But I think that I only lost one. In other words, out like a light.
45:17
I only lost one, which was, I guess, a pretty decent percentage actually, in comparison to what normally happens.
45:26
So I guess, and of course I was wearing this, I was wearing my Rush Limbaugh bow tie. Yes, I do own a
45:33
Rush Limbaugh bow tie. Now you're saying, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Rush Limbaugh never made bow ties.
45:39
You are correct. If you are a Rush Limbaugh tie aficionado, as I was for years back in the nineties when he was making them, you would be aware that Rush Limbaugh did not make bow ties, but Bow Ties Limited of Vermont will take any tie that you send to them and turn it into a full on bow tie.
45:59
I mean, I'm not talking, well, they will actually pre -tie it or make clip -ons and stuff if that's what you order, but they will also make a real bow tie.
46:09
And I try to wear real bow ties. In other words, I tie it myself. I am one of those, those amazing people that possesses a capacity and a skill that there are very few people left in the entire planet who know what
46:24
I know. That's true. That's true. Some of them I cannot, some, like a lot of my clan tartans
46:32
I can't get in full on bow ties, and so I've got some, some of the strap on ones, but anyways, I was wearing this ridiculously loud bow tie.
46:40
So maybe that helped keeping them awake. I don't know, but it was, it was quite the experience.
46:46
It really, really was. So I had a great time there in, in Prior. Like I said, heading back, we're going to try to do something in Tulsa.
46:56
Dennis Gunderson came up from, from Tulsa and set up a book table in the back for us, and so we're going to try to get everybody together and schedule something.
47:05
I happened, just happened to notice in my
47:13
Twitter feed, someone else linking to a debate that included
47:19
Jamal Badawi over the weekend, and when I listened to the beginning of it, it was the Tulsa Islamic Association that sponsored it.
47:27
So we're like, well, that means they exist and that they're willing to sponsor dialogues, let's get hold of them.
47:34
Let's see if there's something that, that we can work out there. And so we're going to try to put some effort into that.
47:41
So once again, my sincere thanks to both churches. They were more than kind to me and really had a great time.
47:49
And I think they found out that I'm just sort of a normal guy. Pastor Melton was very kind.
47:55
He would pick me up on Friday and Saturday mornings, took me over to the community center there in Prior.
48:00
They had one rowing machine, and rowing is my cross -training activity.
48:06
So if I can't ride, then I want to row. They had one rowing machine. It was really funny. I was doing,
48:13
I think the first day I did 12 ,500 meters takes a little over an hour. And I'm just going and going and going.
48:20
Finally, one of the guys that works at the, you can just tell no one had ever done this before.
48:27
Most people probably get on it, row for a minute or two, get off, go do something else, you know. I'm at it for an hour.
48:34
And somewhere around 45, 50, this guy comes by and he's just got to stop. And he looks at me and says, you still going at that thing?
48:43
That's it. Yes, sir. I sure am. I think they started wondering, is he ever going to stop?
48:50
But I did eventually. But anyhow, I had a great time, a great time back there heading to Georgia and Dallas coming up real fast.
49:01
And now we've got to turn our attention to all that. And hopefully you've been in touch with some of the folks back there over the past few days, because I know
49:08
I got an email and, but I was traveling. And so I, since it was about something that you then mentioned later,
49:14
I assumed that you had gotten back to him, but I, I could be wrong. You're like, I don't know. Great. Wonderful.
49:22
We'll, we'll, we'll see how, we'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. All right. I'm going to get back to Yusuf Ismail now.
49:30
We have a tentative schedule for South Africa. But let me just mention there are still costs involved.
49:41
This is a very expensive venture and we need your help.
49:47
We're not there yet. We're still, we'll see how it goes. Still short. We want to get as much into this trip as we possibly can.
49:59
We have not been able to obtain a location in London in regards to having a public debate.
50:06
So we're talking with Justin Brierley about doing some unbelievable radio broadcasts on the one day that I'm there.
50:13
I think, um, though, you know, I just, just realized, uh, that I got an email from him this morning and let me look here.
50:26
Yeah. Yeah. That'll work. That'll work. Uh, so we're, we're trying to, to work, um, that in between the number of the debates and speaking engagements in the days that I'm in South Africa, it's just going to be huge.
50:38
So a, please pray for my health during that time, because that truly is, uh, you know, uh, aside from obvious safety, just my biggest concern.
50:52
I have traveled overseas in the past and gotten sick the first time I went to London, uh, in 2005.
50:58
Wow. You know, within two days I was, I really, really got sick and that just made it really, really, really, really hard and, uh, trying to do debates and things like that will sick would be just pretty much next to impossible.
51:12
So please pray for that. And then if you can, uh, assist us in getting to South Africa, uh, small ministry, these are big things, you know, uh,
51:22
I was asked over the weekend. Well, so, so who travels with you when you do these things? Um, nobody, we couldn't afford that.
51:29
Uh, it's just me, myself and I, and, uh, so please, uh, join with us.
51:36
If you, uh, if you can do so, there is a banner ad on the website.
51:42
And, um, click on that and, uh, help us to get to South Africa. Uh, one of the gentlemen
51:48
I'll be debating is Yusuf Ismail, and we have been listening to his opening statement. We have sort of wandered a few times in listening, um, in that process onto other topics raised by the presentation itself, but I've spent a little more time on those than maybe we should have, but, uh, hopefully it's been useful to you.
52:10
We continue on listening to Yusuf Ismail's opening statement, his debate with David Seacombe, primarily on the subject of the
52:18
Bible, and it would help if I would click in the proper place, nice lead in, and then, boop, what was actually said, because we don't have the originally signed autographs of the particular writers.
52:31
So scholars have to basically develop what they believe could have been the original. Then of course, if I recall correctly,
52:37
I sort of stopped there and started talking about the 1924, uh, you know, printing of the
52:42
Arabic Quran and the fact that somebody had to do that. Someone had to create that. Someone had to choose between variants and, and different versions.
52:50
And did they know about Ubay ibn Kab? Did they know about Abdullah ibn Masud? Did they have access to Palimpsest manuscripts from Sa 'ana?
52:58
No, they didn't. And so again, any written document that comes from antiquity, uh, has to go through the process of, uh, decision -making.
53:11
It's just the nature of any work of antiquity. The Quran went through it. The question is, does it go through it in an open process where the information is widely available, or is it just done in the back rooms someplace, and then you just tell everybody to accept it?
53:29
There's a vast difference between the two. Of course, you have other issues. You've got things like source criticism, where we understand that the inspired authors were the products of their particular environment.
53:37
So there exists no reason for excluding the possibility that in composing their works, they drew from existing and selective sources.
53:44
Exactly. Is that true of the Quran as well? The Quran specifically says it's not true of it.
53:51
So is there no proper way of doing source criticism for the Quran? One of the things that has to be addressed, uh,
53:59
I don't know if this will fall within the context of our, uh, discussion at all. Uh, but one of the things that has to be addressed is the fact that clearly the
54:09
Quran does draw from other sources and materials.
54:17
And by, by any standard, by any standard whatsoever of the people that Yusuf Ismail quotes in regards to biblical criticism, the utilization of Jewish sources, the citation of Gnostic gospels, the, uh, the
54:42
Arabic infancy gospel, the infancy gospel of Thomas, uh, the, um, all the
54:49
Jewish intertestamental stories that end up in the
54:54
Quran would be clear in arguable evidence for the fact that the author of the
55:02
Quran drew upon preexisting materials, which runs directly counter to the
55:09
Orthodox Islamic conclusion that the Quran is an eternal document written forever on a tablet in heaven.
55:18
Now, this morning, I, I, this morning
55:23
I killed myself. Um, you know why this, the ride this morning just wiped me out?
55:30
I mean, 72 and a half miles, that's not a big deal for me these days. The dew point was 71 degrees. Now some of you back
55:38
East are going, 71? We've got 78 here! Uh, okay. But, uh, 71 degree dew point wherever you are is sticky.
55:49
And, um, uh, I did, uh, I finished one book and started, I started the new book by Dr.
55:55
Barrett on, um, monergistic regeneration. But I finished a book by Nasser Abu Zayd, Nasser Abu Zayd.
56:06
Now Nasser Abu Zayd is a professor at the university of Cairo who was in essence, kicked out of Egypt for daring to take the view of the
56:18
Quran that Yusuf Ismail takes to the Bible. I mean, that's what he did.
56:25
He said, the Quran has to be looked at in its historical context, has to be interpreted within that context.
56:33
Um, you can, you can come up with new interpretations. You don't have to go with the interpretation of the Sunnah. Uh, there have been people who have hijacked the
56:41
Quran and we need to look at its textual sources and it's, it's a document like any other document. In other words, he takes the perspective that all my
56:49
Muslim apologist friends take of the Bible, he takes it to the Quran and he was convicted of heresy.
56:58
And his marriage was then declared null and void because a
57:04
Muslim woman cannot be married to a Kafir. And so he and his wife had to flee
57:10
Egypt, went, uh, he been, I'm not sure where he is right now, but he went to Leiden.
57:16
He was teaching at Leiden for quite some time. And so that's what happened to him.
57:24
When you dare apply to the Quran, the very standards that are regularly and consistently applied to the
57:29
Bible by Muslim apologists. Now, again, this isn't, this is not arguable.
57:40
You have to use the same standards in defense of the
57:46
Quran that you use in attacking the New Testament. You have to, if you don't, you're demonstrating yourself, you're proving yourself to be inconsistent.
57:58
Double standards prove the bankruptcy of the argument and the position.
58:08
So it just was worthwhile to listen to. And of course, the majority of the book actually wasn't about the
58:17
Quran, but those, those parts were sort of smuggled in there. So I had to go through all the rest of it, learned far more about his entire life than I really wanted to find out.
58:25
But it was interesting on that level, but still anyway. Uh, so I, I'm, I would be asking my
58:34
Islamic apologist friends. So you agree with Nasser Abu Zaid that any document that purports to be a divine revelation, we should be able to apply these standards and the same ones you apply to the
58:49
New Testament, you will apply to the Quran. Yes. And you'll do it in Egypt, university of Cairo, maybe, maybe at Al -Azhar.
58:57
Uh, or if not, why not? Then of course you've got form criticism, form criticism, where it basically helps us to determine the development of the material, to detect the material, how it developed over a period of time through oral transmissions.
59:11
Um, which again can be applied to the Quran as to anything else.
59:18
Uh, even looking at the subject of the compiling of the Quran. And there are a number of scholars who are working in that area.
59:29
Their work is primarily dismissed, but was there an evolutionary process in the development of the
59:35
Quran? The, the issue, for example, of the Qibla and the direction of prayers is a fascinating issue.
59:46
We don't have enough information yet. And unfortunately, Islamic lands are not overly interested in allowing us to do the kind of research to gain the information, which is one of the strange differences between Christianity and Islam at that point.
01:00:00
But, uh, but there are questions in regards to, was there a major emendation or recension of the
01:00:10
Quranic text around 705? There, that's a date that many scholars have identified, and there's, there's evidence that there was, but there's not enough evidence to, to really establish a lot of the, uh, historical context for the development of the
01:00:27
Quranic materials. But again, you can do form and source criticism on the
01:00:33
Quran as well. And so if you're, if you're going to say these are valid mechanisms for criticizing the text of the
01:00:42
New Testament, then why not for the Quran as well? Those are some of the questions that have to be raised.
01:00:49
Another type of criticism is tradition criticism. Tradition criticism helps us to understand how the initial stories change and develop over a period of time.
01:00:56
For example, look at the story of the baptism with Jesus, which, uh, I beg your pardon, David mentioned about Jesus being baptized by John the
01:01:03
Baptist. And you look at the account in Matthew, and then you go on and you subsequently look at the account, um, in the other gospels in Mark and Luke, and well, particularly from Matthew, and then you look at the account in John, you notice that there is a progressive tendency amongst the later gospels to minimize the implications of the fact that John the
01:01:19
Baptist baptized Jesus. I mean, Mark, for example, had simply mentioned the brute fact without caring for the implications that the baptizer had an advantage over Jesus in Mark chapter 1, verse 9 to 11.
01:01:31
Luke, for example, writing later, he minimizes mention of the baptizer by using the passive form of the verb to say that Jesus was baptized.
01:01:40
Matthew has a baptizer declared... Now, by the way, I would like to ask you,
01:01:45
Sivismile, how he knows that a Lukean passive flows from Luke attempting to minimize something?
01:01:56
Where's this information coming from? Because Luke has a specific syntactical, um, rhythm and cadence, a certain form and style, and how do you know that those passives that he uses are somehow derived from some kind of embarrassment on his part about the role of John the
01:02:23
Baptist? John, very clearly, does have a concern about whom?
01:02:30
The disciples of John the Baptist. He has a concern because they continue to exist as we see in Acts chapter 19.
01:02:37
Years after the death of John the Baptist, there were still disciples of John the Baptist that were encountered in the proclamation of the gospel.
01:02:49
And so, couldn't it not have anything to do with any kind of concern about a competition or anything?
01:02:57
But could it be an expansion in light of the fact that John has encountered disciples of John the
01:03:06
Baptist that he gives fuller information for their sake so that they might know that John...
01:03:12
I mean, people would come to Palestine, maybe they'd hear John preaching, and then they leave, they've never been back. They don't know what happened to John.
01:03:18
They don't know what happened when Jesus came and was baptized. They don't know that John pointed to Jesus, that here is the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world.
01:03:24
So, he provides that information so that they can know. Why is it just one theory?
01:03:32
Well, there's embarrassment. This is development. And again, if it's fair game to just throw out a theory, not really substantiate it, just say, well, you know, what should be said is, well, you know, this is one possibility, but I realize there's all sorts of other possibilities.
01:03:49
This is just sort of a theory on my part. But why can't you do that with the Quran as well?
01:03:55
It's not nearly as much parallel information, but there are. There are differences between the surahs when they tell certain stories.
01:04:01
And why can't we come up with a tradition, a tradition, tradition criticism of that? Ah, you see, this is a later retelling of the same story in the text of the
01:04:10
Quran. And there's clear embarrassment about how it was told originally. And now, why not? Well, because it all came from Muhammad.
01:04:16
Well, the New Testament all came from God. That's, that's easy. That's easy.
01:04:23
But just, just one of the questions that we have to ask. Tearing Jesus a superiority in John's gospel,
01:04:30
John writing last has a baptizer at once raising the ban of Jesus and lowering his own.
01:04:35
He says, Jesus becomes greater. The baptizer becomes lesser. This basically explained why John's gospel never clearly asserts that Jesus was baptized.
01:04:43
You don't have it explicitly stated because we see that as we go from Mark to John, the story of the baptism is reshaped to suit the particular time.
01:04:50
Or each one of the writers has a specific purpose.
01:04:56
John already knows very clearly that the story of the baptism is one of the most popular and well -known stories in the entirety of the
01:05:10
Christian tradition. And so he doesn't repeat it. Instead, he gives more information, just as he gives more information at other points in time about the, you know, the feeding of the 5 ,000 and, and background information and things like that, where he clearly does intersect with the story, but clearly
01:05:27
John is not trying to repeat the story. It is already about time he writes very much a part of the consciences of the people of the
01:05:33
Christian people. So why assume with the agnostics and unbelievers?
01:05:42
And I've never understood it. Well, I do understand it. But I don't understand why my Muslim friends don't see their inconsistency here.
01:05:49
Given what the Quran itself says about the followers of Jesus, why do you assume automatically a negative stance regarding these writers?
01:06:03
Well, I know the assumption is, well, we don't know who Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John really were.
01:06:09
And, and, you know, the Injil was given to Jesus. We don't know what that was. And yeah, we'll quote these books when we want to come up with prophecies about Muhammad, but yeah, double standard, double standard.
01:06:21
If, if these were the ones who wrote, and we can trace a very, very early tradition back to the first few generations, that the
01:06:31
Gospel of John was the source of the earliest understandings of prophecies about Muhammad, which is really bad, given that you can so easily demonstrate that John 14 to 16 has nothing to do with an
01:06:44
Arabian prophet that comes 600 years later. But, but given we can trace that back, then this idea that, well, the
01:06:52
Injil isn't Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it's just, it's such an amazingly bad assumption on the part of modern
01:07:01
Muslims. I know why you're forced to it. You're forced to it by an error in your own text, by the fact that your own author of your text didn't understand what the nature of the
01:07:10
Injil was, didn't understand the content of the New Testament, did not have any firsthand, you know, information about it.
01:07:16
But that's the reality. The reality is that the author of the Quran did not know what he was dealing with, and it's painfully clear to me that Muhammad did think that his teaching was in accord with what the original disciples taught and what was in the
01:07:33
Injil. He just didn't know what was in the Injil. And so, by taking him as a prophet, you then have to attack the documentation that demonstrates he wasn't a prophet.
01:07:48
That's how you've got to do it. It's backwards, but it's the apologetic situation that the
01:07:55
Muslim is forced to deal with. Later needs of the community. And so what must have happened, some scholars assert that Christians may have found the implications of the baptism of Jesus to be a tension with later claims about Jesus's divinity.
01:08:08
If Jesus is divine, if he's God incarnate, then what's the need for someone to baptize him? Again, I will repeat my invitation.
01:08:17
We're not going to do it this trip around, but I will repeat my invitation. I will debate a credentialed
01:08:27
Islamic apologist, Yusuf Ismail, Shabir Ali, Adnan Rashid, Issam Zawadi, Abdullah Kunda, Abdullah Al -Andalusi.
01:08:39
There's just a list of folks right there. Jamal Badawi. I would love to have a dialogue with Jamal Badawi.
01:08:47
Zakir Naik, who will not debate anyone, at least anyone that could challenge him. I will debate the following proposition, resolved, the
01:09:01
Gospel of Mark teaches the deity of Jesus Christ.
01:09:08
I will take the affirmative, with all confidence, with all confidence.
01:09:16
This idea that Mark is some backwater, low
01:09:23
Christology, undeveloped, blah, blah, blah, is a pile of hooey in the scholarly language.
01:09:34
It's ridiculous. The only reason people say it is because they heard a professor say it and they've never even thought through, never even thought through the ramifications of what they're saying and whether they could actually substantiate it from the text.
01:09:53
And most Muslims don't realize the scholars who say that are under no compulsion to actually deal with Mark as a singular gospel.
01:10:05
They don't care about that. They're not worried about that. They can just cut Mark up into pieces and pick and choose which portions they want to deal with.
01:10:14
But if you deal with Mark as a whole, I could deal with Mark without the longer ending and demonstrate that the author of this book could not have believed anything less than the deity of Christ in writing what he wrote.
01:10:35
Just throw that out there. Be happy to do it. So you can see the later development, that evolution in Mark's gospel is baptized.
01:10:41
But in John's gospel, the baptism is never explicitly mentioned. In fact, the baptizer immediately states the superiority of Jesus, which is not to be found in Mark.
01:10:49
In Mark's gospel, there's an inferior position that Jesus occupies. Obviously, I would strongly disagree with the characterization of inferior position that Jesus occupies.
01:10:59
So that's one particular type of criticism. Historical criticism, we won't deal with it at length. And of course, redaction criticism is where you have a redactor taking an external source or basically taking various sources and compiling it and putting it together.
01:11:13
Now, which again, can be applied to the Quran as well. We've got a copy of the
01:11:20
Bible here called the New American Bible, the New Catholic Translation. And you open the preface. It's sanctioned by the
01:11:27
Vatican. And you look at the preface and look at what it says, what the scholars have to confess about the Bible in general. Now, again,
01:11:34
I would suggest to my
01:11:41
Muslim friends that they, you know, we struggle to really fully understand the relationship of Sunni and Shia or between major groups within Sunni Islam and things like that.
01:11:59
I understand that. But please realize that for many of us, let's put it this way, for many of the people who are going to most consistently and most directly seek to refute your claims and defend the faith, there is a vast chasm that exists between us and the claims of the
01:12:28
Roman papacy. For example, you will never hear me quoting the New American Bible other than to criticize it.
01:12:38
And I realize that you might be confused between New American Bible and New American Standard Bible. They are completely different translations.
01:12:45
One's readable, one really isn't. The New American Bible is a very poor translation, and yet modern
01:12:55
American Roman Catholics are stuck with it. But what the Vatican has to say or what the
01:13:03
Pontifical Institute in Rome has to say is pretty irrelevant to me.
01:13:09
It would be a little bit like my quoting some of the Ayatollahs from the
01:13:15
Shiites and trying to hold Yusuf Ismail accountable to what they have to say. He's going to say, well,
01:13:21
I'm Sunni, I am not Shiite, and we don't really think that those folks know what they're talking about.
01:13:28
Same here, same here. Just keep that in mind, though I've encountered many a
01:13:35
Muslim who just assume that, well, the Pope represents all of you. No, no, the
01:13:41
Pope barely represents Roman Catholics, and I can think of a number of Roman Catholics who aren't overly excited about him necessarily representing them either.
01:13:50
So, yeah, hopefully that's understandable. And about the Gospels in particular, and this is a quotation they give.
01:13:59
What do scholars confess about the Gospels in particular? What did the author of the Gospels do? This is a quotation. In the congregations, mainly in the cities around the
01:14:06
Mediterranean, they found scores of narratives about Jesus, the beloved founder of the Christian faith. The writers took these narratives and frequently even remolded and refashioned them to bring out the lesson they wanted to teach.
01:14:16
Where did the gospel writers say that? I'm just wondering, I mean, again,
01:14:22
I'm not questioning that this is what they say, but where do religious liberals, and Rome has lots of liberals, just like a lot of Protestants do, got lots of liberals that don't really believe the
01:14:37
Bible's word of God or anything like that, and they come up with their theories, they repeat those theories and teach those theories.
01:14:43
But where do you get that? I mean, I can go to Luke, and Luke says there were people that compiled accounts and there were people that he interviewed and he examined the information, but where is this idea?
01:14:57
Now, I do believe that there were eyewitnesses spread out all across the
01:15:05
Mediterranean world. That's what was so interesting about the thesis developed by Richard Balcombe in Eyewitnesses, is that there were eyewitnesses and they did travel out from Palestine and they did become associated with the
01:15:17
Christian congregations, and so they would be a very healthy and important source of information and corrector to innovations and things like that, but that would only increase our confidence.
01:15:36
Where's the idea that, well, they're just sitting around and they're piling these things together and making things up as they go along?
01:15:44
I mean, especially the only reference to that Lukean prologue, he himself says what?
01:15:50
So that you might know the exact truth of what you have been taught. Oh, well, that's just religious rhetoric, because we all know there is no exact truth, right?
01:16:02
Why not go with what Luke actually said? Well, because any of the gospel writers are guilty until proven innocent.
01:16:10
And when you ask, what can we do to prove them innocent? You're basically told, no, not much. And we do that all the time.
01:16:17
Therefore, the four gospels are not really biographies of Jesus. This is what they say. They are digests of Christian teaching concerning the risen
01:16:25
Lord Jesus. Well, if you mean by they're not really biographies of Jesus, well, of course not. They don't pretend to be,
01:16:31
I am going to write a biography of Jesus of Nazareth. And here's the first day.
01:16:37
And then he went to this school. No, they don't. They don't pretend. That's not what a gospel is.
01:16:44
They don't pretend to be a form of literary writing that really wouldn't develop until much later.
01:16:53
This cold journalistic accounting of facts. Even Tacitus and Pliny and others didn't write that kind of modern
01:17:03
Western. You're supposed to be totally unbiased journalistic style of writing.
01:17:11
They don't even pretend to be that. And of course, it would show a tremendous amount of bias on the part of somebody today to say, well, they have to be to be true.
01:17:22
A remarkable fact is that for a long time, Christians misunderstood this truth about the Gospels regarding the genealogy, they say.
01:17:30
The genealogy of Jesus in Matthew's gospel is not an absolute true genealogy. First, Matthew took it.
01:17:36
Now, right here, again, I would highly recommend to Yusuf Ismail that he spend a little time with Daryl Bach and D .A.
01:17:46
Carson and the other huge commentary on Matthew.
01:17:52
The name's escaping me at the moment. I'll grab it sometime and mention the authors of that one.
01:17:58
It's the two -volume, huge work on Matthew. The literature on the genealogies is huge.
01:18:07
It's massive. But one of the most basic elements, basic elements of that literature is this.
01:18:17
If you think that ancient genealogies were meant to be prepared to be submitted to Ancestry .com,
01:18:26
then you don't understand the very genre of genealogy. The idea that these were intended to be records that you would store in public archives is just amazingly naive.
01:18:49
Many people have that idea. Many Christians have that idea. They've never even thought about, OK, why does
01:18:56
Matthew divide things up? Well, you know, Matthew's writing to the Jews, and so he's actually trying to make an argument of the
01:19:01
Jews, utilizing argumentation they'd find to be compelling. And yet Luke has a different audience.
01:19:07
So he handles, he actually handles it backwards from Matthew, and he traces the line differently, and he really emphasizes women in here.
01:19:15
So clearly both people are presenting this genealogy in a way as to communicate something to a particular audience.
01:19:24
And so they're not identical, and you wouldn't expect them to be identical. And yet the idea is, well, if they're not absolutely identical, then one of them is a lie.
01:19:35
Well, given that there are far too many examples to even dispute the reality, that genealogies at that time were more concerned about descent from particular individuals than they were upon naming every single person, every single generation, so that you would skip generations if a person in that generation did not do anything that was overly noteworthy or would cause the reader to look at that line of descent in a better way.
01:20:09
So, for example, there are numerous secular examples of going from a grandfather to a grandson and skipping the father in between, or even switching from one line to another line via first cousin or something along those lines, if there was a reason to do so in regards to what was trying to be proven by the person writing the genealogy in the first place.
01:20:41
It was a literary form, not a
01:20:46
IRS form, okay? I mean, that kind of legal genealogy that you'd find on Ancestry .com
01:20:59
is, again, a fairly modern thing. And, in fact, the fanciful genealogy for Muhammad found in Ibn Ishaq would be an example of this.
01:21:16
You know, the exaltation of, you know, progenitors and all the rest of that kind of stuff, very, very, very common in the literature that we would have.
01:21:27
So the question you have to ask is, not only are there differences and do they trace things differently?
01:21:34
And that's raised all the questions about, well, is this Joseph? Is this Mary? Is this the same line? But they're going different directions because, you know,
01:21:41
Luke is utilizing these terms for some of these people. Obviously, we already know from the
01:21:48
Old Testament that trying to make the genealogies in the Old Testament work is extremely difficult because there are so many places where certain individuals have more than one name.
01:21:57
And why would somebody have more than one name? Well, a number of us do, but we don't do with names the way things they did back then.
01:22:06
But especially when there would be a, like when Israel goes into exile, many of the people that go into exile would take a name that would fit in with the culture they went into.
01:22:18
So would they be known by their Hebrew name or by an Aramaic form that comes from a period of exile, et cetera, et cetera?
01:22:27
There are all sorts of issues, and I don't think that any one theory answers all the questions, but I've never met anyone who raised the objection to the genealogies who had even started to do enough work to make meaningful commentary on it.
01:22:48
It's just, well, I'm going to assume the genealogies have to be this way, and since the biblical genealogies aren't this way, then it's bad.
01:22:55
And that's just where they go. That's how they handle it. That's not enough. It's insufficient.
01:23:02
By the way, the other real good source that I would highly recommend looking at, Michael Brown, Answers to Jewish Objections to Jesus, has a whole section on the genealogies,
01:23:14
Matthew and Luke. So check those sources out, and you'll find them to be very, very useful.
01:23:21
Perhaps from the family of Joseph. Second, the sacred writer refashioned the document to a list of three times 14 ancestors, and we'll unpack that as we go, clearly.
01:23:29
Reading the Gospels, one should therefore... By the way, Matthew did, and his audience would not have batted an eye.
01:23:38
In fact, they would have gone, hmm, very interesting. Matthew is writing to the
01:23:43
Jewish people today. You have to use argumentation. The Jewish people today are going to hear and understand. There's a number of places where Matthew makes arguments, and you and I sit back and go, uh, really?
01:23:55
Hmm. But the Jewish people of Second Temple Judaism would have gone, ooh, hmm, ah.
01:24:03
And it wasn't written for us to analyze and evaluate from a different culture, different language, different time.
01:24:12
It was written to communicate something to them. The important thing is for us to understand that, interpret it in context, and then take the value from that.
01:24:19
See? That's important. Distinguish historical facts from theological elaboration.
01:24:27
It's difficult to know, they're gone. It's difficult to know whether the words of Jesus or the words of sayings attributed to Jesus are written exactly as he spoke them.
01:24:35
We as Muslims accept the words of Jesus. We accept the revelation given to him. But they are now telling us that these words may not have been exactly as spoken by him.
01:24:42
Now, what does it mean for a Muslim to say, we accept the words of Jesus? Because the only words that I could see a
01:24:51
Muslim actually accepting, given the grounds of argumentation that I have encountered over the past, uh, eight and a half years of my study of this particular subject, obviously not every moment of eight and a half years, would be the words found in the
01:25:12
Quran, which are the very words that none of these people that he's quoting, that Yusuf Ismail is quoting, would give the slightest weight to historically.
01:25:24
I mean, of all the claimed words of Jesus in the world, the ones that the unanimous consensus of all historical scholars should not be given any weight at all are those in the
01:25:40
Quran. Why? Well, because there's no evidence for them. There's no evidence for them.
01:25:48
I mean, the Gospels go back to the first century in Palestine, right? Yes, they do.
01:25:54
There's no question about that. Where do the words found in the Quran go to? Uh, well, somewhere, seventh century
01:26:04
Arabia. No evidence whatsoever that anybody knew anything about those words in the intervening time period.
01:26:16
So on a historical basis, I mean, just a historical basis, I mean, if you want to be a Muslim and say, well, this is divine revelation, great, but then you're going to have to abandon all this kind of form -critical, historic -critical argumentation against the
01:26:31
New Testament, because all I've got to do to respond to that is go, well, God inspired it. Done with that, right?
01:26:41
So it's interesting that there's this, you know, we believe what Jesus said. Now, seemingly, the other words that Jesus said that they believe are
01:26:51
John 14 and 16, which, from a historical -critical perspective, as Yusuf Ismail would well know, the
01:26:59
Gospel of John is often dismissed because of those very texts, in fact, especially the ministry to the disciples before the crucifixion, those are the very ones that are dismissed.
01:27:16
So how can you, on the one hand, say, well, Jesus prophesied the coming of Muhammad when he talked about the paraclete, and then turn around and say, but we reject everything else in John about the deity of Christ, the crucifixion, everything else, and then we also accept these words of Jesus that are found in the
01:27:36
Koran that have absolutely zippo historical pedigree to them at all. Those are some of the questions that we might want to ask.
01:27:49
That was almost like it was time. It wasn't quite time, but that's almost like it was.
01:27:55
I don't know. How far did I get there? I think I got maybe 10 minutes.
01:28:01
I am playing Yusuf at a little bit higher speed, but might have gone through all of 10 minutes there.
01:28:06
I'm not sure. Going to sneak in probably a regular -sized dividing line
01:28:13
Thursday morning, Thursday morning this week. I've got another little trip to make.
01:28:20
And so Thursday morning, probably going to do Radio Free Geneva.
01:28:26
Get back to Jerry Walls. Ah, yes. So tune us in then. We'll see you then. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for.
01:28:45
We need a new Reformation day. It's a sign of the times.
01:28:52
The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm. Won't you lift up your voice?
01:28:59
Are you tired of plain religion? It's time to make some noise. I'm going, I'm going back home.
01:29:10
I stand up for the truth. Won't you lift for the Lord? Because we're pounding on, pounding on, waiting by the door.
01:29:18
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01:29:28
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01:29:34
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