November 1, 2005

Apostolic Defense of the Hope Within Us

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

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

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

And like I told everybody in California when I was over there just yesterday, actually I got back yesterday, but especially on Sunday when we had to play a lot of time stuff, we're the ones who honor 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. 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 I say? We're here on time. It was great this weekend. Two things. 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. Tom Askell was speaking, and I spoke, and George Zemeck was speaking. 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 Christian faith and coming up with new stuff just simply to be new, and who honor 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, and so on and so forth. And then, of course, this was Reformation weekend, remembrance of October 31, 1517, the beginning of the 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 Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Sunday School and in the morning service, preaching and teaching, did the Da Vinci Code.

They had rented, because in the evening there was the quarterly meeting of the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches in Southern California, and they knew they were going to have an overflow crowd.

There was no way they were going to get everybody into the main sanctuary, and so they had rented a screen and a digital projector. And so this thing, I had asked, I said, you know, for Sunday School I could do my Da Vinci Code presentation.

It's coming out. People need to know about this. 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, and I go, that's a 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's 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 Sunday School class, and I did the Da Vinci Code, and then we put it back for the evening.

We had about 500 people for the quarterly meeting. It was great to see all those. Yes, you can get 500 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. Jim Renningham was there. Richard Braselis was there. Earl Blackburn was there. It was great to see everybody. And that was Steve Markadon's church. And they were very, very kind to me.

I had a great time over this past weekend with folks on both ends of the spectrum, both 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.

I guess they've got propositions going. 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.

Critique of Nadir Ahmed and the Problem of Bullying Apologetics

We continue today on The Dividing Line, though, with trying to finish up the Shabir Ali debate versus Sam Shamoon. I do want to mention I have queued up the Nadir Ahmed versus Sam Shamoon debate. I mentioned on the blog the fact that as soon as we began playing the Shabir Ali debate, we started getting these notes from what I can only describe as the 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 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 Rukman does not. If you'd like to see an example of Rukman, 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 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 Muslims. And so immediately we started getting these nasty emails about how 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 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. It's just like, no, actually, 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 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 Bible and demonstrates he doesn't understand anything about sexual criticism or anything related to that.

And if we finish this debate today, which I don't know that we will, maybe I'll play some of that. But just a word to Nadir Ahmed's followers. I do not respond well to bullies. I have a far higher view of truth than you do.

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. 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 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, I am truly, truly unimpressed with that particular spectrum of the Islamic apologetics community, just as I am unimpressed with Rukman and his followers as well. So anyways, we continue.

Shabir Ali, the Fig Tree, and Selective Reading

Yeah, that looked even quiet. Hardly. We continue with the 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.

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.

And if you can't figure it out, that's again not a problem of the scripture. That's your finite rationality imposed on the scriptural truth. Acts 3, 14, and 15. And Peter gives us a high Christological confession.

It says you killed the author of life. Even the knee of Christ, but call him the source of life. Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1 to 12, where the author goes out of his way to prove that Christ is the creator, and he's Yahweh God.

And read Hebrews in context to get information what he meant. Not in any meaning by any means. This verse stays, the rest have to go. It doesn't work like that.

I like that. Very well done, 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 Koran and Shabir Ali's understanding of the Koran.

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.

Original Sin, the Qur'an, and the Need for a Savior

The reason why I'm giving you my papers is I'm hoping...

Now there is an excellent example of someone who clearly either hasn't or has not listened to any of the Christians that he's talked to. And I'm going to assume, let innocence be innocence, 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 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.

...perfect will to the Father. He willfully told the Father, if it be possible, let this count as for me, yet not my will be done, your will be done. Yes, he did say that, but also read Mark in context again, since you want to stay with Mark, because in your opinion it has a low Christology, read Mark 10 .45, where he says that he came not to serve, I'm sorry, not to be served, but to serve and to lay his life down as a ransom.

So God did not unjustly punish Christ. The triune God, in their perfect wisdom and knowledge, said the eternal words to the couplet, who willfully died for the ones he loved. And the point in Mark's gospel, when you read, the reason why Christ is asking that the couplet be passed, because now in his eternal existence, he must experience something he never experienced before, namely the wrath of God upon him on our behalf.

And that's why he emphasizes, not my will, but your will be done. And the Father answered, no, son, this is what we must do for this sake, and Christ willfully died.

Now I'm a little confused there. I didn't hear a response from Ali, and he was supposed to, I think he was supposed to be able to give a response. That happens frequently. I've had to grab a number of moderators and say, no, 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. I'm not certain.

We'll see here in a second. Let me sort of back it up a little bit here. How does one achieve eternal life before they part with God? To inherit eternal life. And he said, if one can't do it, one's supposed to agree with at least that statement, keep the commandments.

Now here again, and this is, I've got experience in this one with Hamzah Abdul-Malik, because that was a common question he would ask. And he even brought it up in a debate on the deity of Christ. They look at these passages, they do not understand what 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. Again, isolating certain texts, and there truly is no meaningful hamartiology, no meaningful doctrine of sin.

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

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

And that way you have your entrance there to present the gospel. Wow, Pelagius lives down in the Arabian Peninsula. Wow, again, no insight whatsoever as to what 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 Bible.

That's why they have to try to say that the Bible is corrupt, so that this kind of very sub-biblical teaching can be fitted in with the idea that somehow Jesus and the apostles were still in this line of prophets, along with Moses.

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 Pelagian context.

And some people say, well, that means that you have no assurance of salvation. Man used to come to Jesus demanding that salvation. He would say, I never knew you. There would be people who thought that they had the assurance of salvation.

But I think one of the writings of Paul has to be right when he says, work out your own salvation. There has to be some formulation there, not a full assurance, otherwise you overstep your limits and you go wrong.

Wow, again, talk about complete and utter eisegesis, complete ignorance of context, unwillingness to even look at context. At least when Sam is looking at the Koran, he looks at it in context. These individuals not only don't seem to be overly concerned about the context of the Koran, 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 Mormon missionary, not even from the good ones. Same type of stuff here being presented by one of the premier apologists for the Islamic faith.

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 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 Son of God, etc., etc.

Again, might be very useful in dealing with a brand new 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 Christian faith as a whole.

And we are lying.

But if Christians do say it, then people have to try and get him. When you buy a biblical thing, it's like a shabbalah that sets the record straight. The Qur 'an tells him, not that he will die if he eats from the fruit, because we know he didn't die, the Qur 'an tells him, if you eat from the tree, you will be a wrongdoer.

And in fact, he was a wrongdoer, but then God gave him words of retentance to recite, and to ask God for forgiveness, and God says, He always forgives the person who retents, but God forgives.

Now you see, excellent presentation there of how much lower than biblical revelation is the Qur 'an. 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 Qur 'an.

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 Qur 'an do not come from God.

And in fact, result in the concept and the idea of this that's now being promoted,. Well, all you've 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.

The entirety of what God has done, Jesus Christ, overthrown through the gross misunderstanding of Muhammad that results in the teaching of the Qur 'an on this subject.

And in fact, the author of Hebrews was specified. The rejection of Jesus Christ, not sinning. As you'd like me to quote the Qur 'an in context, quote my scripture in context, please. Secondly, when you mention about original sin and Islam doesn't teach that, and again, I don't know who you're trying to convince, Shabir, because not only does the Qur 'an allude to it, but the authentic Islamic traditions affirm that Adam sinned, damned everyone else, and cast them out of Paradise.

Let me quote to you Sahih 64, verse 10, I'm sorry, 64, 10. Messenger A .P .T. upon him is saying, There was an argument between Adam and Moses, and Adam came the better of Moses. Moses said to him, you are the same Adam who misled people and caused them to get out of Paradise, that cast us out of Paradise.

How does Adam respond? Adam said, you are the same Moses whom Allah endowed with the knowledge of everything and selected him amongst the people as his messenger. He said, yes. You blame me for an affair which had been ordained for me before I was created.

So you have the concept of original sin. The problem is you don't have divine forgiveness because you don't have the divine savior to save you from Adam's sin. Christianity has that. Amen.

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

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

All the Muslims got up and left to go to their prayers since they didn't even hear my opening statement. At least they only heard just a few minutes of it. But what you really have is this massive, well, it's a veil over the heart.

It is the exact same thing that the Apostle Paul was talking about in regards to the Jews. Their inability to, 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. Same thing here. You have a dedication to a false religion, a dedication to a system of morality that says all you've got to do is repent and all will be well and we don't have to worry about a savior and things like that.

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, but you could tell that the person was not listening to the response.

No interest at all in the response. 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. 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.

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

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

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. 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 and you've got to go that direction.

The Timing of Christ's Coming and the Fullness of Time

Well, honestly, I don't know the mind of God why he chooses to choose to send Christ at that time.

And, of course, Scripture says at that point, I would add, that at the fullness of time. There are all sorts of reasons why 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.

But we can see some of them in the sense that just as it was God's timing for the Reformation to begin in 1517 and not during the ministry of John Wycliffe 130, 140, 150 years earlier. God has his time.

He's sovereign over these events. And if he doesn't reveal outside of in the fullness of time, Christ came. That is the statement that is made of Scripture.

I assume the questioner is asking what happened to the people before Christ. The Lord Jesus himself in John 8, verse 56 says,. First of all, going back to Shabir's original point where it says, Do the commandments for eternal life.

Shabir, read the rest of the passage, please. Jesus says,.

Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Write that one down. Here Shabir Ali admits that he uses eisegesis. He will not allow an author to speak for himself. His methodology is I will pick and choose what I want to pick and choose and I will not and do not feel any necessity to actually handle the text as a whole.

Now if we applied, can you imagine what he would say if we went through the Quran and the Hadith and isolated this quote, isolated that quote, cut sentences in half, turned Muhammad into a raving lunatic by misrepresenting every word that he said and then we said, well, my methodology is I don't have to accept everything the Quran says.

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? It would be understandable and justifiable outrage. But you just heard Shabir Ali say, hey, that's not my methodology.

I don't have to read things in context. What an amazing statement. And where do you find out about this original Jesus? How does Shabir Ali know about the original Jesus? From a document written 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 Christian faith.

So you take that as your ultimate authority. You take someone who clearly misunderstood things and had numerous errors in his thinking and that becomes your ultimate authority and then you chop the New Testament up and go, well, I'll just take whatever is in harmony with what this other person said over 600 years later.

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

And rightfully so. That's called hypocrisy. That's double standards. You lose the debate when you use double standards. All there is to it. It would be unreasonable to Shabir Ali for Jesus to say things based upon Shabir Ali's understanding of the Quran.

Again, gross double standards. Very easy for me to say, well, I think it's unreasonable for the Quran to have ever said that. So evidently it's been changed. I mean, that is an argument that makes you the ultimate authority and you're not even bothering to offer any type of historical grounding or foundation for it.

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

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

No, no, no, that's not what reading in context means. Unless you can demonstrate that there is some break in the text itself that would allow you to actually provide some type of historical meaningful proof that there has been some emendation and there has been some addition, which you cannot do, especially in that particular context there, the story of the rich young ruler.

It is a singular story. No one tries to argue that somehow that has been amended and broken up over time. Then all you're saying is, I don't have to follow the rules of rational dialogue. I mean, I could now go through anything Shabir Ali has said.

And because I don't believe he is a religious leader that speaks the truth, I can just pick out words, I can rearrange them, I can stick them together, I can ignore context, and I can make him teach anything 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 Christian scriptures.

It is not that Shabir doesn't understand. I understand them, but you don't understand that Shabir is your prophet. No, it is not that Shabir doesn't understand. It is that I don't understand. The Muslim world doesn't understand.

The Christian world doesn't understand. How God can be one in three and three in one?

So, since I guess Shabir Ali is the standard of all intellectual endeavor, how else can you understand what he was just saying? If he doesn't understand it, nobody understands it. Okay, we can understand it, but that doesn't matter if Shabir Ali doesn't understand it.

What an amazing statement. How can Jesus be God and Son at the same time? And why does God have to come and die for the sins of the world? 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.

Read Paul's writings. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 17, Paul thinks that Jesus will come back any time. Kumbha following the rest of the Christian believers with him will be the end of the world. They thought that Jesus came at the end of the age.

Jesus does come at the end of the age, but this age isn't finished yet. Hello?

Why is provision as a sentence exposed? How could this be a God's determinant?

I'm sorry, I couldn't understand a word that was just said. I wish I could tell you what was just said, but I can't understand it either. Very good.

Wine is forbidden in the Bible. The Bible says that in wine there are some good things, for him in time there are some benefits, and also one evil, and the evil is greater than the benefits. Therefore, it is denied that wine...

I guess it was a question about wine. And maybe the question was, if there is to be wine in heaven, why is it prohibited here?

I guess. I don't know. Now, what will happen in paradise is that wine will be given, from which there will be no headache, and there will be no foul smell. There will be not any evil effect. In this world, Satan uses wine to sort energy between people and cause violence and wrongdoing.

But in that world, he will feel no hatred between any people, so that the evil effects of wine will not be there, and why not enjoy the good that God has created? If it is good, why not have it? In fact, Jesus himself, according to the New Testament, has said that he won't drink of the fruit of the vine until he drinks it and he will be in the kingdom.

So, Christians should tell us what fruit of the vine he will drink. Some will say it is grape juice. But it is clearly explained that it is wine that is being spoken about there. In fact, the Bible says that wine cheers up Elohim and men.

That's what is meant by Elohim, that wine cheers up. Moreover, why is sex in heaven with a number of women? Is it prohibited here on the earth? Yes, if you do it all together at once. He never said it is prohibited on earth, except that the Quran limited the number to four and says four only.

But the Bible shows that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, 1 ,000, and so long as he went to them one after another, the Bible doesn't condemn that activity, does it? In fact, Solomon is shown to be a man who wrote scriptures.

Pharaoh, David, and many other people had many wives. And the Bible says that God found David to be a man after his own heart. And who does everything according to what God wishes. Acts 13, verse 22. To have many wives, and that would not be a sin.

It is possible to have that in paradise, and that would not be a sin. Wine cheers up the heart of Elohim. He doesn't tell you that this is Joseph, the judge, and he is speaking of a parable. He is not speaking literally.

Furthermore, as he himself correctly stated, Elohim doesn't say Yahweh. And Elohim can refer to the pagan gods. And in the context of Joseph's statement, the pagan deities were known for sex, cavating, and getting drunk.

In paradise, why not on earth? Because the Lord Jesus tells us the secrets of heaven. And who will come again in glory, says, no sex in heaven. That will not happen because instead of sex, we will enjoy the perfect holiness and peace and beauty of God.

We don't need carnal pleasure. It's not Jesus. It's also based in the context that Allah made it seem so. That's not believable. The whole is in context. Nowhere in the context does it say Jesus. So the fairness of the context does not exist.

Translation, Arabic, and Access to Scripture

Yeah, I was going to make that same comment, but I figured I'd let Sam make it. It was interesting. One of the arguments that Nadir Ahmed presents is on the same passage from Surah 4 about the non-crucifixion of Jesus.

And it's funny because of the fact that there are all sorts of interpretations amongst 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, an article from someone trying to prove that the person who was crucified was Simon of Cyrene based upon that same text.

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.

And so the Bible obviously must be corrupted when it talks about the crucifixion because they have no certain knowledge. 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. That is, it was Judas. And notice how he presents it. Well, the Quran says Judas. Well, no, the Quran doesn't say Judas at all.

And the only thing I would say at that point, I hear what Sam is saying.

When you talk about sending a lying spirit in the mouth of false prophets, that is an act of judgment. That's an act of judgment where you have people who, well, look at 2 Thessalonians 2. Those who refuse to love the truth, what does God do?

What is the act of judgment, the divine judgment upon them? 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.

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