November 1, 2005

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is

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The Dividing Line. 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. Hi, good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line. I realize that a bunch of people are going to be tuning in about 58 minutes from now, because people seem to forget that we broadcast on Mountain Standard Time, and standard time does not change, and it is exactly the same time we always start, but I just can tell from the channel that a bunch of folks are going to show up about 58 minutes from now going, hey, what about The Dividing Line today, and we'll be going, you missed it, and they'll be going, well, you stupid people in Arizona, you need to play with your clocks more often, and stuff like that, and then we'll have that same thing that happens twice a year.

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And like I told everybody in California when I was over there just yesterday, actually,

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I got back yesterday, but especially on Sunday when we had to play with a lot of time stuff, you know, we're the ones who honor

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God's creation, we are the ones who do not play with time, time does not change, all this daylight savings time is silliness, it's dumb, it makes no sense, it's all arbitrary, you know, why not just change it half an hour, and leave it that way the whole year, what difference does it make, none, it's all a matter of perception, it's just silly, so anyway, what can

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I say, we're here on time, it was great this weekend, two things,

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I was in Tampa with the folks in Brandon, met a bunch of folks there to listen to The Dividing Line, and had a great time,

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Tom Askell was speaking, and I spoke, and George Zemeck was speaking, and had a great time with the folks there, always good to meet with people who are interested in theology and want to discuss it, and who actually take it seriously, and aren't into rethinking every element of the

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Christian faith, and coming up with new stuff just simply to be new, and who honor

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God's truth and honor God's word, so it was good to be with those folks, and to speak with them about the central issues of the gospel, faith alone, justification, so on and so forth, and then of course this was

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Reformation weekend, remembrance of October 31st, 1517, beginning of the

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Reformation, or at least how it is rather arbitrarily designated as such, and so I flew back from Tampa on Saturday, had just enough time to get a very quick ride in, unpack my bags, repack my bags, and head back out to Ontario in California, and to the folks at Calvin Grace Baptist Church in the

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Sunday school, and in the morning service, preaching and teaching, did the Da Vinci Code, they had rented, because in the evening we had, there was the quarterly meeting of the

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Association of Reformed Baptist Churches in Southern California, and they knew they were going to have an overflow crowd, there was no way they would get everybody into the main sanctuary, and so they had rented a screen and a digital projector, and so this thing,

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I had asked, for Sunday school, I could do my Da Vinci Code presentation, it's coming out, people need to know about this,

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I'm really trying to get the word out to folks, and well, I don't think we have a digital projector, and I get there, and I look behind the screen,

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I go, that's digital projector right there, and the thing was huge, and I thought, oh man, it's probably, you know, like 500 lumens if it's that big, because it's one of the old ones, just like that, and I got a little closer to it, and started looking around it, 5 ,000 lumens, that's the type of thing where if you walk in front of it, you explode, it's just so huge, so we dragged it over to the main sanctuary for the

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Sunday school class, and I did the Da Vinci Code, and we put it back for the evening, had about 500 people for the quarterly meeting, it was great to see all those, yes, you can get 500

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Reformed Baptists in one place, it is an amazing thing, and of course, they will only know how to sing out of the train of the hymnal when you do that, but we had a great time,

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Jim Renningham was there, Richard Braselis was there, Earl Blackburn was there, it was great to see everybody, and that was

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Steve Markadon's church, and they were very, very kind to me, had a great time over this past weekend with folks on both ends of the spectrum, both

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Florida and California, and I won't make any comments about the politics in any of those places, but it was interesting seeing some of the stuff while waiting at Gates, they had,

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I guess they've got propositions going again, don't they always have propositions going in California, and all the commercials and people hacking each other up, and it was pretty wild, so anyways, great time, we continue today on The Dividing Line, though, with trying to finish up the

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Shabbir Ali debate versus Sam Shamoon, I do want to mention I have queued up the

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Nadir Ahmed versus Sam Shamoon debate, I mentioned on the blog the fact that as soon as we began playing the

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Shabbir Ali debate, we started getting these notes from what I can only describe as the

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Muslim equivalent of Rukminites, now if you don't know what a Rukminite is, a Rukminite is a follower of Peter Rukman, down in Pensacola, Florida, they're

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King James Only folks, they are nasty, they're bullies, they tend to be very insulting, they don't tend to be people who respond very well to reasoned argumentation, as Peter Rukmin does not, if you'd like to see an example of Rukmin, go on our website, go to the correspondence that he and I exchanged in regards to doing a debate, and you will see exactly what

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I'm talking about, irrationality, triumphalism, bullying, so on and so forth, well it seems that the followers of Nadir Ahmed are of the same ilk, except they're

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Muslims, and so immediately we started getting these nasty emails about how

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Nadir Ahmed destroyed Sam Shamoon and all the rest of this stuff, and I've listened to that debate, and it's a joke, first of all, it's another

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PalTalk debate, and they had all sorts of technical problems, I mentioned this last time, but it's a joke to say that Nadir Ahmed destroyed anybody in that context, you can't possibly know how to listen to a debate, or reason logically or rationally to think that that's the case, but that's what these folks are doing, and then it only took a week or so until, you're afraid of him, you're running, you're a coward, you're afraid of him, and it's just like, no actually,

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I haven't heard the man say anything worth even really discussing much of, I played one little section last week where he confused the

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Greek New Testament with the Hebrew Old Testament, and didn't seem to understand that, so I've queued up just a couple things, he tries to make some comments about the corruption of the

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Bible, and demonstrates he doesn't understand anything about textual criticism, or anything related to that, and if we finish this debate today, which

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I don't know that we will, maybe I'll play some of that, but just a word to Nadir Ahmed's followers,

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I do not respond well to bullies, I have a far higher view of truth than you do,

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I think it needs to be respected much more than you seem to think that it needs to be respected, so if you want to run around acting as children, as playground bullies, you go ahead and do that,

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I have no interest in that, and I'm not going to waste my time arguing with you about things when you don't show any ability to reason on a rational, logical level, don't show any knowledge of scholarship, or anything like that, so just, you can stop sending the emails, you just go do your thing, that's fine, so long, have a good time, if you can produce something that has some meaning to it, that you can actually respond to in a meaningful fashion, great, fine, wonderful, we'll take a look at it, but so far

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I am truly, truly unimpressed with that particular spectrum of the

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Islamic apologetics community, just as I am unimpressed with Rukman and his followers as well, so anyways, we continue, yeah, that looked even quite hardly, we continue with the

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Shabir Ali debate, and as you recall, we were in audience questions, and Shabir Ali had just made a rather major error in him misinterpreting the story of the fig tree,

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I almost thought about queuing up the Hamzah al -Malik debate, so I could play you the exact question, where someone asked that exact same question in our debate, and in the context in which it was given, the response that I gave, but I mentioned all that last week, so we continue at that point, it was not the season for figs, if it was not for that phrase, you can say that Jesus wanted to teach a lesson, this is not a good tree, so this is what you do with trees which are not good, among the fig trees, it's not

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Jesus. I like that, very well done

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Sam, yes indeed, again just pointing out the fact that Shabir Ali is extremely selective in the verses that he will utilize, he does not allow for consistent exegesis or interpretation, and if he doesn't understand a passage, if he doesn't understand the background language, whatever, then it must be wrong, in reality of course, the ultimate authority here is the

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Quran, and Shabir Ali's understanding of the Quran, and the Bible is just simply, even though it is the older document, it is just simply guilty until proven innocent, in Shabir Ali's approach, and the reason why

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I'm giving you my papers is I'm hoping you'll give me a freebie out there, thank you

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Sam, this is for you, if you believe, now there's you know, there is an excellent example of someone who clearly either hasn't or has not listened to any of the

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Christians that he's talked to, and I'm going to assume that, you know, let's let innocence be innocence,

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I'm going to assume he's not talked to a Christian, who unfortunately would be able to express to him the answer to his question, how can it be fair, how can

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God's justice allow his son to die for sins that he did not commit? Now here's, talk about an opening, excellent question, but clearly one that if someone was opposed to Christianity, they would at least have to understand what that concept is all about, clearly does not understand what that concept is all about, and hence is asking the question, but I'm glad that kind of a question is presented because it gives the opportunity of giving a response.

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Very simply, Christ came in perfect conformity. A little confused there,

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I didn't hear a response from Ali, and he was supposed to, I think he's supposed to be able to give a response.

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That happens frequently. I've had to grab a number of moderators and say, I know actually it's my turn, or something like that, because they tend to get lost, and frequently a lot of them have never done this before anyway, so I'm wondering if he's going to get a chance to respond to something there.

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I'm not certain, we'll see here in a second. Let me sort of back it up a little bit here.

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How does one attain eternal life before the perfect time? Well, Jesus, on whom we teach the fire and the gospels, answers this question.

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Now here again, and this is, I've got experience in this one with Hamzah al -Dumalik, because that was a common question he would ask, and he even brought up in a debate on the deity of Christ, they look at these passages, they do not understand what

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Jesus was saying. See, Jesus was saying just keep the commandments, that's how you get eternal life, as if that was all that he said.

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Again, isolating certain texts, and there truly is no meaningful hamartiology, no meaningful doctrine of sin.

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I would argue that the view of the justice of God is so much higher in the biblical revelation than it is in the

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Quran. The idea that a person can just simply, well, as long as I repent I'll be well, as if there is no means for forgiveness found outside Allah just goes, okay, fine, if you repent then sure my law was broken and the penalty of that law is death, but I'll overlook it somehow.

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That's one of many, many, many areas, very fruitful areas, because again, when you can trust the

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Holy Spirit of God to bring conviction of sin on these issues, then that kind of response simply isn't going to meet the need of someone whose heart is convicted by the

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Holy Spirit, and that way you have your entrance there to present the gospel.

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Pelagius lives down in the Arabian Peninsula. Wow, again, no insight whatsoever as to what

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Paul teaches concerning the nature of man, just a complete abrogation of Christian perspective, and that's why they, of course, have to attack the

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Bible. That's why they have to try to say the Bible is corrupt, so that this kind of very sub -biblical teaching can be fitted in with the idea that somehow

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Jesus and the apostles were still in this line of prophets, along with Moses.

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I mean, you can go all the way back to Moses, and his doctrine of man is significantly higher than this, that is being presented in this kind of a

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Pelagian context. Wow, again, talk about complete and utter eisegesis, complete ignorance of context, unwillingness to even look at context.

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At least when Sam is looking at the Qur 'an, he looks at it in context. These individuals not only don't seem to be overly concerned about the context of the

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Qur 'an, they're certainly not concerned about the context of the Bible. This is the very same kind of argumentation you get from a new, green, bad

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Mormon missionary, not even from the good ones. Same type of stuff here being presented by one of the premier apologists for the

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Islamic faith. No one has to have to Jesus die for your sins. Christians say, well, we are saved. But notice, the book of Hebrews says that if you sin after hellish, there is no atonement for you.

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But Christians do sin, like the rest of us, because as far as God... Again, utter eisegesis, no concern about context, looking at what the actual message of the text is, just grab this over here, grab this over there, throw them together, don't worry about what the original author meant, as if somehow this is meant to be compelling to a

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Christian who actually knows the scriptures, knows what they're saying, understands the sin that is being spoken of in Hebrews, the act of apostasy, the trampling underfoot the blood of the

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Son of God, etc., etc. Again, might be very useful in dealing with a brand new

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Christian convert or something, or keeping your own crowd excited, but it's not going to do much in regards to actually apologetically responding to the

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Christian faith as a whole. And we are lying. So if Christians do sin, and this is the result, then they have no assurance of salvation either.

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So the fact of the matter is that we do have an assurance of salvation, but to a limited extent. Now you see, excellent presentation there of how much lower than biblical revelation is the

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Quran. Because you have at the very beginning of biblical revelation, spiritual death, separation from God, you have the recognition of the spiritual sickness of man, and it's gone in the

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Quran. It's not there. That is not a further revelation from God. That is a denial of the previous revelation from God that has been confirmed through all the prophets and through Jesus Christ and the apostles, proving that Muhammad and the

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Quran do not come from God, and in fact result in the concept and the idea of this that's now being promoted.

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Well, all you got to do is just repent, and you don't have to worry about this idea of spiritual death, separation from God, the penalty of God's law being broken, all the rest of that stuff.

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The entirety of what God has done, Jesus Christ, overthrown through the gross misunderstanding of Muhammad that results in the teaching of the

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Quran on this subject. For most

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Christians and most Western thinking people, that question makes no sense.

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Not only are the three elements of it not even slightly related to one another logically, but it's like, well, haven't you been listening?

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Didn't you hear what I said? And you see in that the blindness that comes from a dedication to false religion.

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I saw this in the Malik debate. Part of it was due to the fact that six minutes into the opening statement, everybody got up and left.

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All the Muslims got up and left to go to their prayers, and so they didn't even hear my opening statement, at least they only heard just a few minutes of it.

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But what you really have is this massive, well, it's a veil over the heart.

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It is the exact same thing that the Apostle Paul was talking about in regards to the Jews, their inability to,

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I mean, they've got the scriptures in their hands, but they don't see to whom they point. They can't see the glory of Christ.

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The same thing here. You have a dedication to a false religion, a dedication to a system of morality that says all you got to do is repent and all will be well and we don't have to worry about a savior and things like that.

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And as a result, the questions that were asked of me during the question and answer period over and over again, not only was it based upon just complete ignorance of the issues, even though it had already been addressed, and this would be the third or fourth time we were addressing it.

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But you could tell that the person was not listening to the response. No interest at all in the response.

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Now, you might say, well, that sort of shows why you shouldn't bother doing debates. But see, I can't be concerned about that person.

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I need to answer their question as clearly and as compellingly as I can. But I also recognize that there are other people in the audience that I might not even be looking at.

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They might not even be looking at me. They may look like they're a million miles away, but they're actually listening very closely. I don't know.

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I can't tell. There's also that television camera there, and it is recording this.

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And in other contexts where there might be more willingness to listen, there might be more willingness to understand, that type of response is going to be heard in that context.

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I simply have to trust the Lord with that. Yes, it's frustrating to see and to hear people asking questions that demonstrate they haven't been listening and they don't want to listen.

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And you can tell as you start. They're probably not going to listen to what you're saying now. But that's the kind of question that's being asked.

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I mean, I was asked questions not only about the fig tree, but how can Jesus be God if you went to the bathroom?

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I mean, that's the kind of Muslim objection that is out there. And the tendency for us is to go, well, this isn't even worth responding to.

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It's irrational. But it's just simply a completely different way of thinking. And if you want to provide an answer to those folks, you've got to think about it.

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You've got to go that direction. And of course,

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Scripture says at that point, I would add that at the fullness of time, it was, there are all sorts of reasons why

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Christ came when he came in the context in which he came. And you're right. We won't know all of them until eternity.

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But we can see some of them in the sense that just as it was God's timing for the

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Reformation begin in 1517 and not during the ministry of John Wycliffe, 130, 140, 150 years earlier.

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God has his time. He's sovereign over these events. And if he doesn't reveal outside of in the fullness of time,

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Christ came. That is the statement that is made of Scripture. Did you hear that?

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Did you hear that? Write that one down here. Shabir Ali admits that he uses eisegesis.

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He will not allow an author to speak for himself. His methodology is I will pick and choose what

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I want to pick and choose, and I will not and do not feel any necessity to actually handle the text as a whole.

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Now, if we applied, can you imagine what he would say if we went through the

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Koran and the Hadith and isolated this quote, isolated that quote, cut sentences in half, turned

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Muhammad into a raving lunatic by misrepresenting every word that he said.

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And then we said, well, my methodology is I don't have to accept everything the Koran says.

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I don't have to accept every element of the Hadith. I can just pick and choose what I want. What would the response to that be?

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It would be understandable and justifiable outrage. But you just heard

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Shabir Ali say, hey, that's not my methodology. I don't have to read things in context.

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What an amazing statement. I can pick some verses which seem to be a reconstruction of the original

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Jesus or a representation of the original Jesus. I've already said. And where do you find out about this original

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Jesus? How does Shabir Ali know about the original Jesus? From a document written.

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Geographically far removed and over half a millennium later by someone who clearly had major issues in regards to having any type of original knowledge of the

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Christian faith. So you take that as your ultimate authority. You take someone who clearly misunderstood things and had had numerous errors in his thinking, and that becomes your ultimate authority.

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And then you chop the New Testament up and go, well, I'll just take whatever is is is in harmony with what this other person said over 600 years later.

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That's that's how you do it. And you wonder why you end up with all sorts of contradiction and everything else is well, you know, if you came along six in the round year 1200 did the same thing with Muhammad, you could come up with anything you wanted about Muhammad utilizing that kind of a methodology.

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And Ali would reject it. And rightfully so. That's called hypocrisy. That's double standards.

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You lose the debate when you use double standards. All there is to it. It would be unreasonable for God to tell us that we have to be perfect like our

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Heavenly Father. I think it would be unreasonable for God to say, by implication, I think it would be unreasonable.

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It would be unreasonable to Shabir Ali for Jesus to say things based upon Shabir Ali's understanding of the

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Quran. Again, gross double standards. Very easy for me to say, well, I think it's unreasonable for the

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Quran to have ever said that. So evidently, it's been changed. I mean, that's that that is an argument that makes you the ultimate authority.

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And you're not even bothering to offer any type of historical grounding or foundation for it. Purely arbitrary.

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And on any type of debating level, these types of statements are a gross admission on Ali's part that that he shouldn't be debating until he can get some some meaningful foundations underneath him.

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And as far as this debate goes, he's lost it because when you use when you're when you're hypocritical, when you use double standards, when you do that kind of thing, you've lost the debate.

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It's all over with, at least to anyone who judges debates in a meaningful fashion and doesn't just judge debates based upon emotions and so on and so forth.

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So don't tell me to read that. That's what I mean. I mean, he's saying to you, I do not accept everything in the

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Bible. Do you think some of the things that I asked him to read from the Bible tonight, I accept? No, that's not what reading in context means.

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Unless you can demonstrate that there is a some break in the text itself that would allow you to actually provide some type of historical meaningful proof that there has been some amendation and there's been some addition, which you cannot do, especially in that in that particular context there, the story of the rich young ruler.

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It is a singular story. No one tries to argue that somehow that has been amended and broken up over time.

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Then all you're saying is I don't have to follow the rules of rational dialogue. I mean,

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I could now I could now go through anything Shabir Ali has said. And because I don't I don't believe he is a religious leader that speaks the truth.

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I can just pick out words. I can rearrange them. I can I can stick them together. I can ignore context and I can make him teach anything

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I want to teach. And he has no ground upon which to complain because he's just said, my methodology is to do that to the

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Christian scriptures. And he's asking me that and he's saying I am not that. No, the passages he read from Sahih Muslim.

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So since I I guess Shabir Ali is the standard of all intellectual endeavor.

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I how else can you understand what he was just saying? If he doesn't understand it, nobody understands it.

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OK, we can understand it. But that doesn't matter if Shabir Ali doesn't understand it. What an amazing statement.

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How can God be God at the same time? And why God has to come and die for the sake of the world?

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The question is, why at this time? It is at this time because the people who invented this idea thought they were living in the last age.

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Read Paul's writings. Jesus does come at the end of the age, but this age isn't finished yet.

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Hello. I'm sorry,

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I couldn't understand a word that was just said. I wish I could tell you what was just said, but I can't

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I can't understand either. I guess it was a question about wine.

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And maybe the question was, if there's wine in heaven, why is it prohibited here? I guess I don't know.

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Yeah, I was going to make that same comment, but I figured let Sam make it there. It was it was interesting.

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One of the arguments that Nadir Ahmed presents is on the same passage from Surah 4 about the non -crucifixion of Jesus.

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And it's funny because the fact that there are all sorts of interpretations amongst

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Muslims as to what in the world that passage means. I remember a couple of years ago seeing an incredibly complex and quite simply ridiculous, but incredibly complex and ridiculous argument.

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An article from someone trying to prove that the person who was crucified was Simon of Cyrene based upon that same text.

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And it's just utterly incredible the lengths to which people will go. And what was funny was the argument that Nadir Ahmed was making against Sam Shamoon was, see, it says they have no certain knowledge.

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And so the Bible obviously must be corrupted when it talks about the crucifixion because they have no certain knowledge.

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Well, the Muslims have no certain knowledge. There are all these different viewpoints as to what that passage is all about. And what you just heard was someone who takes one of those specific viewpoints.

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That is, it was Judas. And notice how he presents it. Well, the Quran says Judas. Well, no, the

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Quran doesn't say Judas at all. And the only thing

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I would say at that point, I hear what Sam's saying. When you talk about sending a lying spirit in the mouth of false prophets, that is an act of judgment.

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All right, that's an act of judgment where you have people who, well, look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

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Those who refuse to love the truth, what does God do? What is the act of judgment, the divine judgment upon them?

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They are caused to love and believe a lie. And since God could, if he so chose to do so, simply take them out of existence at any point in time as a proper manifestation of his wrath against sin, when he doesn't, he doesn't do that for his own purposes.

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He uses sinners to bring about his own glory and he doesn't normally do that by simply taking them out of existence, just poof, just gone.

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And so the important thing there is that this is not a capricious act on God's part.

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Without, remember, now Shabir Ali has already said, well, no, no, there's no original sin. There's, you know, no, no, no, that's not the case.

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Well, given that we're dealing with the biblical revelation of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam and the issues that arise from that, then we can see that when

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God uses condemned sinners in such a way as to bless his people, that's his perfect right to do so.

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And it's not capricious because it is an act of judgment, as Paul says in Romans 1, the wrath of God is being revealed, present tense, against all the ungodliness and righteousness of men.

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So I have no problem with that ironic statement. And in all fairness, the Qur 'an does not say Judas was killed.

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Now, why didn't Shabir Ali respond to that? Maybe he will in this next section, but it almost sounded like they were cutting that off.

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I hope he comments on it, because I'd like to hear what he says about it. The question is asked, and maybe he'll get to it as part of this answer, but is the

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Qur 'an translatable? And that's actually, if you're not familiar with this, goes back to the fact that for most

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Muslims, a translation of the Qur 'an is not the Qur 'an itself. The Qur 'an only exists in Arabic, and for many

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Muslims, they actually believe the Qur 'an has eternally existed. Even though it addresses

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Muhammad directly about, you know, allowing him to have more wives than anybody else and all the rest of this stuff, they actually believe that the

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Qur 'an has eternally existed, is co -equal with Allah in that sense, and it never came into existence at a point in time.

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One of the major differences between Islam and Christianity at that point as well. So, and it's always existed in Arabic.

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Arabic is God's language. And so there is, quite honestly, amongst many Muslims, a sense of almost

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Arabic snobbery. I was reading, I didn't bring it over here with me, but I was reading one of the introductory texts of the

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Qur 'an, and the whole section on Arabic just praised it as being the greatest language known amongst man.

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Now, with all due respect to Semitic languages, the fact of the matter is that Semitic languages, while they can adapt, have to adapt to the more technical and more expressive and more specific

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Western languages. And the reality is that that's just a silly argument.

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And if, you know, to say that that's God's language, you know, we joking, people joke around,

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Hebrew is God's language, or Greek is God's language, or whatever. No, languages are men's languages.

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And to think that God is the one who, he's limited to one particular language while he can speak all the others, this is, you know, that's just silly.

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It is possible to make a translation of the Qur 'an into another language which would reflect an author's understanding of the

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Qur 'anic text and his attempt to try and convey that understanding to his readers. Now, I've said that in a long way, but that's what

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I'll say. Again, I just...

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Bless the poor boy. He just doesn't know how to use standards in a meaningful fashion.

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Doesn't know how to use scholarship in a meaningful fashion. I was sitting here thinking about the fact that the

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Christians, the early Christians, the earliest translations, the early

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Latin translations, Syriac, and Coptic, and Beharic, etc., etc., the various subcategories there.

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The fact that Christians were willing to allow their scriptures to be copied and distributed.

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The exact opposite of Islam. Islam, one major center force, controls the text of the

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Qur 'an, and it's in one language, and there's this resistance against getting it out to the quote -unquote masses.

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You have to, in essence, become a... You have to join the Arabic -Islamic culture to have access to this.

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The exact opposite in Christianity. Get the Word of God out there into every culture. It is not connected to a particular culture.

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It's not an American document. It's not a Jewish document, in the sense of being limited to that. It's not a

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Greek document. It's not a Roman document. It's not an Italian document, a French document, or a British document. It is the

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Word of God, and it's for all men. That's what makes it so superior to that which says, no, you have to become this first.

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Very, very much the case there, and the fact that now you jump past the time where the

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Roman Catholic Church comes into existence and establishes the Latin Vulgate as its text, and believes that translations from the

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Latin into another language would be vulgar and would be improper, and what happens with Tyndale or the persecution of Wycliffe and so on and so forth, as if somehow there's a connection there, which, of course, there isn't any connection whatsoever.

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Those events took place farther after the writing of the New Testament than we could even discuss with Islam today, because Islam hasn't been around as long as that period of time had passed in that particular context.

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So again, complete misuse of history, scholarship, connecting things that should never be connected. But hey, he's already said, my methodology is,

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I get to choose whatever I want to choose, whether it's logical or rational to do so or not. Why? Because the

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Catholic Church thought that people should not read the Bible. If they read the Bible, they would lose their faith. Whereas on the other hand...

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The sound you hear from California is the staff of Catholic Answers spinning in their desk chairs. But Muslims believe that if people read the

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Quran, they would find their faith, and they wanted people to read the original text. Even today, our women are being denied...

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Ah, looking forward to meeting him, huh? ...disorders we have it, but very few people know how to read it, and very few people would understand that.

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But... Why? Why?

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Why read the Arabic text if you don't understand the words? That is an exercise in utter futility.

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It makes no sense. All you're doing is repeating sounds that mean nothing to you. If you read without understanding, what is the purpose?

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I mean, that's like, you know, people... I'm very consistent here. People say, hey, should I get an interlinear?

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I really don't want to need to... I don't want to learn Greek, but then don't bother with an interlinear. And if you're gonna learn

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Greek, don't bother with an interlinear. Interlinears are the biggest waste of paper that I've ever designed.

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Why in the world read words that you can't understand? It doesn't make any sense. And, uh, funnily enough, when studies of the

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Quran is being done, and the law is done based on the Arabic language, I've noticed my work...

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Not if they can't understand a word that it's saying. If you can't understand it, you can babble all you want.

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It's just babbling. I mean, I've completely failed to see any logical or rational argument here whatsoever.

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Well said, Sam. Well, here comes the conclusion. I don't know where that came from.

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Well, there is the debate with Shabir Ali. And again, I would like to thank

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Sam Shamoon for a tremendously well done job. It is, especially after listening to some of the other debates, and I haven't listened to all of them.

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I'm still working on that. It takes a long time to listen to hours and hours and hours of stuff, especially when you're doing lots of speaking yourself and traveling as I'm doing.

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But it is so good. I have seen certain debates with Shabir Ali with people that just, you know, weren't providing much of a response to him.

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And I'm sure there are others who've done an excellent job, and I'll get around to seeing them. And I'm looking forward to that in the future as well.

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But an excellent encounter. And one that hopefully, as you've listened to it, you have both seen the commonality that exists between all of those people who attack the word of God, whether they be atheists, or whether they be