Radio Free San Francisco

When people talk about homosexuality, they often ask, is it a choice? The American Medical Association, the

American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the

National Association of Social Workers have all stated sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be changed.

Do you think homosexuality is a sin? I think that it's unnatural, detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.

It's unnatural to you, Kirk. If you want to follow the Jesus motto, man, don't go shaming people like that for who they are.

While Roseanne Barr wrote, Kirk Cameron is an accomplice to murder with his hate speech.

Being gay is a gift from God. Well, you're the first minister I ever heard say being gay is a gift from God.

When people are born, they have that type of orientation, so he is gay by divine right. It's really fruitful to inquire into what

Jesus said about homosexuality, so let's do it now. Okay, we're done.

Jesus never mentions homosexuality, never talks about it. A man

I found in the Yale library, there's a book written about 1935 that suggested Paul might have been a repressed gay man.

The founders of Chick -fil -A hate the gays. And they focus on hating other people, just like Jesus.

I want to say, you know, can we, can we all get along?

Can we, can we get along? And now, from high atop the transgendered

America building, it's radio free San Francisco. I'd like to say immediately, if you love the theme, send your, your kudos to Barry Lattin at Alpha Omega Ministries.

If you hate it, send that to Barry Lattin at Alpha Omega Ministries as well.

Oh yes, so many amazing statements all crammed into one here for radio free

San Francisco. Everybody said we needed to have a radio free San Francisco theme, and I suppose someone's going to come up with a radio free

Rome theme eventually, and a radio free Salt Lake City theme for when we talk about Mormonism, and what would we do for atheism?

What would radio free, I don't know. Anyway, but welcome to The Dividing Line, and if you're listening today, then you were there for the first time, the first run of, and Rich wasn't here for it.

Rich, Rich missed the, he's busy, but, but he, he missed the first official playing of radio free

San Francisco, but he heard it before, so it doesn't really count, but anyway, welcome to the program.

It is interesting to note that I was linked to an article about Joseph Bacon, B -A -K -E -N, maybe

Bakken, who knows, a 22 -year -old Montana man admits gay bashing attack was hoax.

A 22 -year -old man who claimed he was badly beaten outside a downtown Missoula, Montana bar because he is gay actually sustained his facial injuries trying to do a backflip on a sidewalk, police say.

Joseph Bacon of Billings, Montana was charged with filing a false police report after a video obtained by police and the

Missoula Independent newspaper cast doubt on his story. On Tuesday, Backen pleaded guilty in Missoula Municipal Court to the false report charge.

He was given a 108 -day suspended jail sentence and fined $300, according to the Independent. Backen initially reported to police he was attacked early

Sunday morning by three men outside the Missoula Club, where he said he had gone to celebrate his 22nd birthday after asking patrons about the location of a gay bar, according to local media reports.

Pictures of his badly bruised face quickly circulated on the internet and were displayed on the

Wipe Out Homophobia Facebook page and other sites. Gay rights activists expressed outrage at what they thought was a gay bashing crime.

But Backen's story began to fall apart after the Independent and Missoula Police Department obtained what appears to be cell phone video footage.

Cell phones have changed the world, folks. Cell phone video footage shows Backen trying to do a backflip on a sidewalk in Missoula.

He falls short during the landing, which is now called fecking, according to the

Olympics. Oh, did you see that? That poor German diver. Oh my goodness.

He has to be a good diver to have gotten in. I think it was in the finals. But like part of his foot missed on the springboard.

And so he started going around in the air and then he just, he didn't belly flop, he backflopped.

And when you're doing that, when you're doing that in the finals at the Olympics, oh my goodness.

That was, oh. But that's sort of what he did. That's sort of what Backen did. Actually, I couldn't do what he did.

He almost got all the way around, but he smacks his face on the ground. Video evidence taken by undefined sources was examined and demonstrates that Joseph Backen caused injury to himself by attempting a backward somersault and striking his head on the sidewalk at about 2 .30

a .m. on Higgins Avenue. Now excuse me, but anyone who is in Missoula, Montana on the street at 2 .30

a .m. is obviously not there for any good purposes because the sidewalks were rolled up at 10.

So I'm not sure how he hit his face on the sidewalk because the sidewalks would have been rolled up long before that particular thing took place.

The reason I mention this is not that there are not people who don't beat up gays. There are.

And I remember so very clearly the lovely Katie Couric blaming the young fellow's death up there in, if I recall, it was

Montana, on Christians as if the guys in the bar at that time in the morning were

Bible -believing, church -attending, Jesus -praising Christians. Yes, thank you,

Katie Couric, for your deep, insightful understanding of all those things. But the fact of the matter is

I'm seeing a lot of this stuff. I'm seeing a lot of this kind of material.

You know, here's a guy. He smacks his face and goes, hey,

I can become famous. I can strike a blow for my fellow homosexuals.

Every time a homosexual runs into a tree, now it's going to be blamed on someone who beats up homosexuals.

And remember the two lesbians somewhere, I've forgotten where, they discovered, again, it takes time and the initial story always gets much more coverage and becomes much more a fabric of the dialogue of the society than, oh, by the way, they faked all this.

But they spray -painted some slur on their own garage and put like a noose or something on it.

They did it themselves. But I wonder how long it will take, or I wonder if two years from now, once this little teeny tiny story has disappeared, how many times this guy's face will be on a pro -homosexual website someplace or the story about the women being allegedly attacked and all the rest of that stuff.

That's how these things take place. I think they need to go back and read the story of, was it,

Peter and the Wolf? Yes, yes, yes. Well, hey, look, in our society today, it works.

It works because people don't, people aren't worried about truth, they're worried about how they feel. And the scary thing is, there are voters out there that would still look at this and go, yeah, well, still,

I still think it's terrible how people treat homosexuals. It's like, yeah, so should we spend money on training them to do backflips better?

I mean, seriously, come on. But there are people that are just, Laramie, Wyoming, thank you very much.

Mutato In Channel told me where that specifically took place. So anyways, found that interesting.

And what is also interesting, of course, is the fact that the news will almost never cover when homosexuals are the ones doing the beating up or the homosexuals are involved in criminal activity.

In fact, what was it, was it yesterday, a day before yesterday here in Phoenix, there was a police officer, a

Phoenix police officer was arrested. I don't have this in front of me. I'm just going off the news stories I heard on the local radio station.

And he was arrested for sexual conduct with minors.

One was 17 and one was 14. But they were both male. So it's a male police officer with young males.

Now, it is a well -known fact that many in the homosexual movement are all are pushing for the lowering of the age of consent.

That is normally something that goes hand in hand with the homosexual movement. So the 17 year old, especially, there'd be a lot of places in not the

United States, but in the world where that wouldn't even be an issue. But the whole thing, the whole, oh, this is terrible, was because of the age, not the homosexuality.

Because, oh, that's just, that's just, that's just the way, oh, it's, you know, that's perfectly natural. Can't say anything about that.

Can't say anything about that. The double standards, truly, truly amazing in our society today.

Now, we have been listening to a debate that took place back in 2008. We're going to do two segments on the show today.

Even I heard that. What was that? Sound like, sound like a bell going off out there. I'm not sure what's, what

Rich is up to there, but it does involve power tools. Yes, it does. It does involve power tools.

It involves stuff for your new track lighting. Yes, I know that. I know that I'm getting some track lighting so I can actually see. I have discovered that especially

I need two things. I need light and reading glasses because, amazingly, over the past couple of years, the font in all of my books in my library has shrunk amazingly.

I don't know how that happens. I mean, I thought that stayed, stayed consistent in printed books, but it obviously doesn't.

I mean, I was, I was working on a section on the, on the book and I was counting the number of times that Wahid appears, the, the root.

The root's Wahad, but Wahid appears in the Quran and, you know, I have to put it over where the most light is and put on the reading glasses because when

I first got that exhaustive concordance to the Quran, the font was nowhere near that, that small. It really wasn't.

But evidently the dry, the dry temperatures here in Phoenix caused paper to shrink very uniformly resulting in smaller font sizes.

Oh, oh, and, and I mentioned that, I, I go ahead and mention that and what happens in channel, what happens in channel, my, one of my friends, one of my compatriots, what does he do?

He says he's writing a book and he's the guy who's doing proofreading, drives a stake through my heart, but I can multitask because I just kicked him out.

Okay. Anyway, we've been listening to a debate from 2008.

We're getting right toward the end of Harry Knox's presentation and I, unfortunately,

I was, man, this is going to run out before we, we run out of time and then

I'm going to need to find the second part of his response. But anyways, let's at least try to get through Harry Knox's presentation.

Harry Knox has been chosen by President Obama for positions of high authority in our land, which again, tells you something about the worldview that is currently in charge in the

United States of America. But we continue with Harry Knox's presentation. I'm going to preach those sermons and share those insights in Sunday school and in your home

Bible study. At the same time, I pray you will help people understand those texts don't say a word about my loving relationship with Mike.

The word homosexual didn't even exist in the English language until the middle 1800s.

What is, how is that relevant? Let's say that's true. Let's say that other terms were used.

We know beyond all question that hopefully by now, having listened to all the things we've talked about on this, you're starting to recognize the really bad argumentation of the pro homosexual, especially people who call themselves

Christian homosexuals. For example, saying that people back then didn't know about orientation or people back then didn't know about loving monogamous relationships and all the rest of this stuff.

And hopefully by now you're starting to hear this. They did know about it. They wrote about it.

There are references. They just ignore it. And this kind of, well, the term didn't even exist.

But are you seriously telling me that that's somehow relevant to what the Bible actually teaches?

Who cares? English didn't exist at the time of the writing of the Bible. The question is, does the

Bible describe the perversion of the natural sexual order where men engage in sexual intercourse, which is unnatural sexual intercourse because you can't engage in actual sexual intercourse, a man with a man, but you have to pervert the purposes of the human body, engage in sexual activity.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that because the term homosexual develops over time that somehow the

Bible can't accurately address that? And again,

I hope you notice the issue that is raised here, you know, my loving relationship with Mike.

Again, we're talking about an incredibly, if this man has had a monogamous relationship with this man and that the chances of that are incredibly small, both before they're hooking up and then during the time of that.

And studies have proven beyond all shadow of a doubt that the vast majority of homosexual men do not want monogamous relationships.

I think those who represent or put themselves in a position of representing homosexuality should be open and honest about this and say,

I am in the minority. I am in the minority here. Be honest.

Make sure people understand that the large majority of male homosexuals have many partners in their life and that a huge proportion of them have hundreds of partners in their lives.

Those are the facts. That's not even questionable. Keep that in mind when you hear this kind of stuff.

We have only just begun to understand anything about sexual orientation, and we must not put words into Paul's mouth that he would not have even understood.

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he urged him to remember who he served. Now, did you catch that?

I mean, that's exactly what I just said, is the whole idea.

Paul didn't understand this. Paul didn't understand sexual orientation.

What the Bible says is irrelevant. That's the fundamental assertion that's being made.

And to confront and encourage those around him consistently, even though it would cost him.

I know what it costs someone to preach on Leviticus 18 and 19 and point its message at the institution that holds her or his retirement account.

It cost me my ordination. Thank goodness. Thank goodness.

That is the right thing. Let me assure you, I would have no respect whatsoever for any

Christian denomination whatsoever that would allow this man to hold an ordination within it.

And any Christian denomination that would have him have an ordination within their denomination is demonstrating their apostasy as a result.

I don't think there's the slightest question of that at all. But not my ministry.

I know how much easier it is to let people think the Sodom story is about people like me when it's really about empire and war and a lot of things you don't want to touch on when making your livings at places like Fort Bragg.

I know that since 90 % of pedophiles are men who abuse girls and that since it's your neighbors who make pornography one of the largest industries in America, it is easier for you to let folks think

Paul was only worried about homosexuality. Now catch that. Catch catch this.

This is again, I'm encountering this over and over and over and over again.

Well, since there's other sexual sin, since there are others who are, you know, there's pornography, there's all these things, that means you shouldn't be so focused on homosexuality.

Well, I haven't encountered too many people. There are some, I suppose, and the few people that have even gotten close to doing this have gotten quite the pushback, but I've not encountered people who are saying, you know what?

I am really into porn and I think that's the way God made me and I should be a minister.

And you are closed -minded if you try to in any way, shape, or form restrict my freedom.

But that's what we've got going on here. And so think through the arguments, see where it actually goes, and be amazed as I am amazed at how often the argument that is being presented is presented repeatedly and yet it is absolutely without merit.

But I must finally be true to my calling and ask you to live deeply in the texts that are before you.

I urge you to be true to those texts and to live into your tasks as pastors and teachers and Christians, because the stakes are high.

Your parishioners and neighbors are desperate for your guidance, and if you fail to teach them what these troubling texts are really about, there will surely be others willing to do your job for you.

Now we have worked through all of his presentation and discovered that on each of the texts that he addressed, he gave a shallow, surface -level, acontextual, and fully refuted reading of the text.

There wasn't any question about that, but unfortunately that would require folks to actually know something about the

Bible and have a much higher view of its inspiration than Harry Knox has. In order to accomplish their own ends,

I come to you with quivering hands. I say all of this to you with the discomfort and trepidation required by our task for today.

I would like to send you out shouting, but that is not my job.

Mine today is to have you hear the words of Paul to Timothy that have proved timeless enough to become

Scripture. Always be sober. Endure suffering.

Do the work of an evangelist. Carry out your ministry fully. I myself am already being poured out.

I will confess the exact meaning of that application difficult to say.

Well, Michael responded, I thought, very well. He started off, as Michael tends to do, in a sympathetic tone, but then he got around to getting down to the real issue, and the real issue is, what does the

Bible actually say? I'm going to just jump into the middle of his statements and let you see what happened.

In the case of relationships, there is a violation of God's ordained male -female order.

If you'll study Romans 1, there's no intellectual laziness. I'm a biblical scholar. I live in these things.

It doesn't make me right, but it certainly does not make me intellectually lazy. You study Romans 1, study all the top commentaries, compare what

Paul says in Romans 1 in the Greek with the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Genesis 1, and he says that male -male sex and female -female sex having nothing to do with temple prostitution, he explicitly says that is contrary to nature, and then lists things in Greek that are exact parallels with Genesis 1.

It is a violation of the male -female created order. You cannot get away from that.

As for Leviticus, go home and do a little study. Take out your Bibles and read

Leviticus 18, and read it from beginning to end. You will see that this chapter speaks of universally forbidden sexual practices.

God said that Canaanites did it, the Egyptians did it, the nations you came out from did it, and because of that,

I judge the nations, and if you do the same thing, incest was not just in temple prostitution, bestiality was not just in temple prostitution, homosexual practice was not just in temple prostitution.

That was not the historic biblical context. The fact of the matter is the

Bible explicitly speaks against homosexual practice. We can't get around it. We must minister with compassion, understanding to the gay and lesbian community and work for greater recognition of their needs, but we cannot and dare not to our own detriment change what

God's Word said. Thank you. Now, he only had just a few moments, and that was just the closing statement, but as you heard, he very directly went at what was said.

Didn't have time to go into each and every text, because the rebuttal period was way too short to be able to do that.

But he provided a strong response, and remember, the opening presentation was based upon looking at the

Bible, I was a minister, quoting from Paul's letter to Timothy, and all the rest of this stuff, trying to make it sound like, well, if you really got deep into these texts, then what you'll see is they're not saying what these terrible, horrible homophobes are saying.

Now, when challenged, if you really, really do believe that that's what the texts say, when you're challenged, what are you going to do?

You're going to go deeper. You're going to provide counter -argumentation. You're going to talk about what the original languages say.

He just said there are direct parallels in the language between what Paul's saying and what's found in Leviticus, and that's where Arsenio Coites comes from, and Arsenios and Coimbe, and all these things we've been saying for a long, long time.

I brought these things out in my response to Matthew Vines, and so on and so forth. It's all there.

You're going to have to provide some kind of response to that. But I've debated these guys.

I've debated John Shelby Spong. Did he provide a response to that? No. No.

I've debated Barry Lynn. Did he provide a response to that? No. What was the fellow up in Salt Lake City, Denny, Brad, something.

Anyways, homosexuals in Salt Lake City. Did he provide a response? No. No. If I got a chance to debate this guy, would he provide a response?

Well, let's listen to what his response was, and I think you'll see an amazing change of attitude.

Right. Very good. Harry. In every conversation that I ever have about this hard topic, it becomes pretty quickly clear whether the person with whom

I'm talking values the experience of the Holy Spirit in my life.

First shot. First shot, pure subjectivism. If you say my exegesis is wrong, then you're questioning the value of the

Holy Spirit in my life. Now, what does that absolutely necessarily say? Well, if you don't do that,

Harry, if you say the Holy Spirit is telling Michael Brown to say the things he's saying, then your

Holy Spirit tells people to contradict each other, right? And if he's not doing that, then what you're saying is that you don't respect the role of the

Holy Spirit in Michael Brown's life. Huh. See how that goes both directions?

But you see, when you're painting yourself as the victim, when the entirety of your argumentation is meant to create emotional response, not logical, rational, and intellectual response, then you don't worry about stuff like that.

You just pour it on thick, and you keep going with the victim mentality. And the sad thing is,

I believe clear thought is a gift of common grace even to the unregenerate person.

The ability to recognize that if you don't think clearly, if you don't think logically, if you don't think rationally, then you are denying your true humanity.

You are not functioning the way that you should function, no matter what your worldview is. And that you should require of the leaders of your culture that they likewise think logically and rationally.

That's a gift of common grace. And I'll be perfectly honest with you, it is being withdrawn from a large portion of the populace of Western culture.

It is. I see people reasoning. I see people thinking purely on emotion.

They don't think about the future. They have no concept of what's good or bad for a culture, what's good or bad for children.

And it's part and parcel of God's judgment upon this culture. And that's why this kind of rhetoric is effective for many people.

On any truth level, it's laughable, but it's effective. And whether they're going to be presumptuous enough to deny that the experience that I have had exists.

And not just me. My lesbian and gay Christian and sisters and brothers of many other faiths, too, so fully embody the beauty of those faiths all over this world that we stand in stark contrast to any rhetorical argument.

Now think about this. What is... I feel like putting my arms around someone and start swaying back and forth and singing the

Coca -Cola song. You know? I mean, this is a debate? I mean, kumbaya!

I mean, what... this... It's just... Oh. On this.

The love of Christ, I pray, is simply available to you through my life and apparent to you through my life.

Don't worry about the fact that my opponent just ripped my entire opening statement to shreds in five minutes or less.

Don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain. Look how nice I am. Look how well -dressed

I am. This is argumentation? I work very hard to make it be so every day.

And I know that that is something that the church over time has valued as highly as it has the

Bible. Really? The church over time has valued this kind of, well, look at us.

And look how wonderful we are. More than the Bible. Or at least equal to the Bible? Okay.

What it has sought not to do when it has been wisest is to make an idol of the

Bible. And to make it the only standard by which we judge things. We...

Catch that. Catch that. You see the shift here? Opening presentation.

Let's go deep into the text. Having been torpedoed and dive -bombed in, very kindly, in only five minutes, the very loosely affixed mask of belief in the inspiration of the

Bible flies off. And now we don't want to make an idol out of the

Bible. I mean, we don't want that to be our only standard. We need to look to other things.

We need to look to how wonderful people are. And so, you know, those Aryans were wonderful, and so that never should have happened.

And polytheists are wonderful, and atheists are wonderful, and Muslims are wonderful. So let's just all get together. You get the feeling, you get the conclusion that it was a completely dishonest waste of time on this man's part to have ever even pretended to open up the

Scriptures here. Why not just do what Dan Savage did? It's a bunch of bleep.

You know, at least he's honest. You know, it saves a lot of time. Dan Savage just gets the point.

I reject it. I understand that. I get that. That's consistent.

What I don't get are these people who keep carrying this book around that fundamentally they detest.

That's what I don't get about all theological liberals. My suggestion to all theological liberals, give it up.

Quit playing the game. Quit carrying it around. Yeah, Bible sales might go down just a little bit, but we'll pick up the slack.

Really, we will. It's okay. It's just absolutely amazing to me.

I don't know why liberals, okay, I do know why liberals teach Bible. They teach Bible to inculcate unbelief in it.

But why even pretend? Just be honest and say,

I don't really believe this stuff, because that's what we're hearing right now. Let's not make an idol out of it now.

It's not the final authority. My experience, you know. We judge when we do it most wisely in community and in deep and fervent prayer.

We listen first in our own hearts to what God is telling us. And where do you, are you getting all of this,

Mr. Knox? Your source is? I don't remember Jesus saying any of that.

Jesus kept referring to the Bible. In fact, he held men accountable to the scriptures.

He said, have you not read what God spoke to you saying? Seems he had a much higher view of the perspicuity, authority, and ability of the

Bible to act as judge in these things than you do. So why should I listen to you, Harry Knox?

Because you claim the Holy Spirit? Well, the Holy Spirit gave us the scriptures, and the only reason you know there is a Holy Spirit is because of what the scriptures say.

And so, you're asking me to reject what the Holy Spirit gave to us. Even Jesus and the apostles talked about how, for example, he'd quote what

David would say, but David by the Holy Spirit said, so they had the same view that I do. And so, you're telling me that I should reject what the

Holy Spirit has given to me in favor of what you claim the Holy Spirit has given to you. This shouldn't surprise us too much.

If you've watched my debate with Barry Lynn, Barry Lynn claimed in our debate to receive revelation from God on the same level as the

Apostle Paul. Yeah, he did. Go back and listen to it.

I was rather shocked. Of course, he also said Paul was over the top in the book of Galatians.

But there you go. And then we talk and talk and talk in our churches and in our homes and amongst our friends and family about these hard issues.

And we listen for what is resonant with all of the themes of the Bible. We listen to what is resonant with all the themes of the

Bible. No you don't. No you don't. Theme of the

Bible, the holiness of God. Genesis through Revelation.

Nothing unclean will enter into his presence. It's right there.

You don't like that. You've gotten rid of that. The filter through which you remove entire themes of the

Bible is what? Your homosexuality. Your sexual perversion becomes the filter through which all the themes of the

Bible you don't like are removed. That's what we're having presented here. With justice and community, care for the neighbor, a seeking of real understanding between people who don't understand each other, don't know each other very well.

And when we do that, we come to better decisions over time. And that is why over time the churches in this country and around the world are beginning one after another to embrace what

I'm saying to you tonight about homosexuality. To really embrace the ministry gifts of lesbian and gay, bisexual and transgender people in their midst.

Now have you noticed he just got his head handed to him on a platter, biblically.

Have we heard any biblical response? No. All we've heard is postmodern drivel intended to undercut the authority and perspicuity of scripture.

And to celebrate them so that now churches like the United Church of Christ, denominations like the

United Church of Christ and several others are finding new growth by really telling the truth.

New growth. These denominations have just about dried up, blown away, withered away, but they're getting new growth.

Truth about these things and finding that they have congregations that are vital and vibrant because they're doing so.

And really they're great Christian social clubs, well, religious social clubs, not Christian social clubs. Modeling true community, the kind of community that says, you know, life is hard.

And what I don't want to do is be violent to you in any way. I want us to go through this together.

And I will not, first of all, use words to hurt you. And I won't do anything else

I can to incite other people to hurt you. I won't use words to hurt you.

That's what Michael Brown just did to me, used words to hurt me because he refuted what I said.

I'm sorry, folks. Oh, James, you're just so unloving. I don't consider that loving.

I stopped thinking like that when I was six. Don't you remember?

Mommy, mommy, she said this to me. Um, John, they're just words, you know, what was it?

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Isn't it a part of maturity and adulthood to weigh words, think logically and not wear your emotions on your sleeve?

You hurt me with your words because you said I was wrong. Goodness, it is absolutely positively, folks, it is not

Christian love to give in to that kind of mealy -mouthed, anti -Christian definition of love.

The love of God took Jesus to the cross of Calvary. Don't you realize that by giving into that, you're turning the very love of God at Calvary into a wishy -washy emotional feeling that accomplishes nothing at all?

It's amazing to me that we so quickly give into this stuff.

That's not love. Anyway.

Now, you know, we've had these conversations before. The Bible is pretty clear,

Paul especially, that women are to be quiet in church. Let's, let's, let's provide a real meaningful rebuttal to what

Michael Brown actually said. No, no, no. Let's poison the minds of every postmodernist and do damage control.

Isn't this almost the only thing we see? The only thing we see in modern media?

It just drives me nuts. I don't care. It can be on Fox, or it's even worse on CNN, and does

MSNBC even exist anymore? I don't know. But anyway, this is what you hear all the time.

When someone actually starts making a point, it's a, yeah, well, what about this over here? And off you go into, into irrelevancies.

No one can stick on a point. It is absolutely frustrating. Not leaders.

Quiet. In fact, says something about covering themselves. We have moved beyond that as a community of faith.

And we have seen the resonant gifts of women in ministry among us. And now we have moved beyond what

Paul said. See, so we just need to move beyond what Paul says. Need to move beyond scripture.

Our community has now become revelational. That's what's being said.

Now we celebrate them. The Bible says just as explicitly as Paul says that he thinks what

Mike and I do in bed, which is such a tiny part of our lives. If it's such a tiny part of your lives, how come it dominates your thought?

How come it dominates your self -identification? How come it dominates your identification as a, as a quote unquote Christian?

I'm sorry, it's not a small part of your life. It is the definitional part of your life. And that's plain.

And the fact you can't see it says something about the effects of it upon thought. Is unnatural.

He says that slavery is natural and that slaves should obey their, their, their masters.

Yes, they should. But, and given the kinds of slavery that existed back then, why don't you make the differentiation that any honest person would have to make between the slavery of Rome, the slavery of the

Hebrew system and the slavery of the modern American system? Why don't you make that differentiation, sir?

If you ever hear anybody talking about this and they don't make that differentiation, they do not carefully delineate.

They do not talk about the fact that slavery saved lives under the

Hebrew system because it was the only way you could survive. It was either that or starvation.

If they don't bring that out and if they don't point out that that's completely different than what was happening in Africa where people were being kidnapped and forcibly shipped over and that that's completely different than anything you find under the

Hebrew system, etc, etc. If they don't bring those things out, they're dishonest, they're lying. Some of them know, some of them don't.

Most of them are just simply repeating the rhetoric they've picked up from somebody else they've never checked on their own. But they're just, they're just dishonest.

You can just automatically tick that person off, oh, don't need to listen to what that person has to say.

We have moved beyond that in conversation, first with God and then with each other.

And we have come, in fact, to learn that we, in the white part of the church, have much to apologize to people of color.

Now notice, he's talking about what the Bible says about slavery, but then he makes it a racial issue, which it wasn't in the

Bible. And so he's clearly mixing the two without making the proper distinctions.

We'll continue looking at what Harry Knox had to say as we, maybe in some future edition, in the not -so -distant future, of Radio Free San Francisco, but we need to press on.

We are halfway through the program today. And so maybe we could take a break, maybe, possibly, and then when we come back, we'll come back with Radio Free Damascus.

And what I've wanted to do for a couple weeks now, and that is start getting into the debate that took place between Chris Green and Paul Belal Williams, and that had prompted my hope for desire to engage

Mr. Williams in debate. But of course, his preemptive strike that I am an extreme fundamentalist and therefore not worthy of his time, even though it seems like Chris Green and I believe pretty much the same things.

But hey, that consistency thing is going to come up a lot as we examine what Paul Williams had to say.

But we're going to take a break and be right back. Breaking news from the

White House and the issue, gay marriage. For a lot of people, the word marriage was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs.

I think same -sex couples should be able to get married. The NAACP has passed a resolution endorsing gay marriage as a civil right.

This comes two weeks after the president announced his support for same -sex marriage. Under the guise of tolerance, our culture today grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

Anyone opposing or questioning this today is quickly shouted down, called a bigot, a homophobe, a hate monger, threatened and accused of discrimination.

It's become commonplace to see people who take a biblical stand against homosexuality ostracized to the point of losing their job.

How soon will it be before we will also see people losing their freedom? Now more than ever, Christians need to be equipped to be an approved workman of God, correctly dividing the word of truth, as we are told in 2

Timothy 2 .15. Dr. James White and Pastor Jeffrey Neal have partnered to bring you their book, The Same -Sex

Controversy. If you are a Christian, this book is just one of the tools you'll need to be prepared to give a proper defense of the faith in the face of the unrighteous onslaught we face today.

The authors write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on this subject, explaining and defending the foundational biblical passages that deal with homosexuality, including

Genesis, Leviticus and Romans. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and return to God's plan for His people.

The Same -Sex Controversy, Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message about Homosexuality. Get your copy today from the bookstore at AOMN .org.

And don't forget to search for other resources like Debates and Past Dividing Lines dealing with this very provocative issue.

And remember, Theology Matters! Hello everyone, this is

Rich Pierce. In a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man -centered self -help program, the need for a no -nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater.

I am convinced that a great many go to church every Sunday, yet they have never been confronted with their sin.

Alpha and Omega Ministries is dedicated to presenting the gospel in a clear and concise manner, making no excuses.

Man is sinful and God is holy. That sinful man is in need of a perfect Savior, and Jesus Christ is that perfect Savior.

We are to come before the Holy God with an empty hand of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Alpha and Omega takes that message to every group that we deal with, while equipping the body of Christ as well.

Support Alpha and Omega Ministries and help us to reach even more with the pure message of God's glorious grace.

Thank you. Every knee shall bow.

The question, Paul, well look, Paul, what about this business here now? It says here that every knee shall bow to God, and you're saying here to the

Philippians that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. So Paul assures us, he says, look, don't get upset.

That was just something for them, not just fooling around with those Philippians. Because Jesus said it in so many ways that he's not

God, you just want to stick it to him no matter what. I said, you're not reading your

Bible. You don't read your Bible properly. You know, God has got sons by the tons in the

Bible. By the tons. You know, tons of... Coming to you live from our underground bunker deep beneath the madrasa where Ergen Kanner was trained in jihad and Arabic somewhere in Turkey or Beirut or Cairo or Ohio?

Anyway, this is Radio Free Damascus. Radio Free Damascus.

And we continue, actually begin to dive into... I played a section of this, but I wanted to obviously deal with it more fully, especially before heading over to London, Lord willing, in just over a month to engage in debate there.

Not with Paul Williams, unfortunately. I would love to be able to do so.

But he has made it very clear that he has no intention of defending his statements against me because I am a fundamentalist.

I consider that, of course, cop out. And the fact of the matter is Mr. Williams does not read either

Greek or Hebrew with any facility. He's not taught church history or systematic theology or issues like that.

And I do not believe he could defend the statements that he has made. He would have to go with secondary sources. I would be able to challenge him on the basis of the text on the issues that he raised.

And I just don't think he wants to expose himself to that. So it's much better to simply dismiss your opponent when you know you could not defeat that opponent in debate than it is to actually be honest and say

I really can't defend what I said and I'm just going to move on to other things. That's the common way of doing things today.

I struggle with respecting that, but that's what he has done. And at least he also left the

Muslim debate initiative, and I will be engaging those in the Muslim debate initiative in London.

So anyway, since he won't debate, we will expose the errors of his statements and hope that the folks with the

Muslim debate initiative will be listening, as I'm sure they will be, and hopefully cause some further discussion and maybe some emendation of the argumentation to a higher standard by so doing.

So let's dive into the debate. Chris Green had given his opening statement.

I would like to say I do have one word of criticism for Chris Green. I'm not going to – well,

I might play a portion of it. But he did one thing that I do believe is just completely outside the rules of formal debate or anything like that.

But during the cross -examination, he evidently turned – I did not watch the video, but I listened to the audio – but evidently turned to Paul Williams and sought to get him to answer questions during his period of rebuttal.

And it backfired on him, backfired on him badly. Ended up wasting the vast majority of the time of his rebuttal because Paul Williams would not answer the question succinctly.

But then again, he wasn't under any obligation to answer at all. When people turn to me during rebuttal and ask me questions,

I just look at them. And if they keep asking, I just say, why don't you talk to the moderator about whose turn it is here?

Your turn. You're supposed to be doing rebuttals. You do your rebuttal. I'll do my rebuttal. And then we'll have cross -examination.

Then we can talk to each other. But don't break the rules of debate and drag this in.

And it backfired very, very badly on Mr. Green at that point. But other than that, it would seem that on the vast majority of topics, we believed the same things, probably presented them a little bit differently or approached the subject of debate a little bit differently.

He said, I'm not a debater. Well, I am. I've done a lot of them. So hopefully over the past, wow, 22 years, yeah, 22 years of doing debates, and I don't know that there's been a single year during that time when

I haven't debated. There might be. There might have been somewhere in the 90s, but maybe early.

No, I don't think so. Wow. I have to think about that. I wonder, you know, in 22 years,

I've done nearly 120 debates. That would be, yeah, I'd be right at about five, five -ish, yeah, per year.

So it would be hard to have almost any year in there where you weren't having some debates. So I've done a lot of debates, and hopefully

I've learned something there. But let's dive into Mr. Williams' opening statement.

Plain scholarship, the resurrection of Jesus vindicates all these claims. That's actually the end of it.

My time is up. Thank you for listening so patiently. Sorry about that. Thank you.

We now have Brother Paul Williams' presentation for 25 minutes, and just a point that there's no problem quoting

Christian scripture. That's Abdullah Al -Andalusi, who I will be debating next month.

Prophet Muhammad did one a step further. He actually allowed Christians to pray in the mosque. So we won't be doing that today, but just the debate.

Bismillah al -Rahman al -Rahim. As -salamu alaykum and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank

East London Mosque for kindly agreeing to host this event today. It's a real pleasure to be here. I feel especially honored to be on the same platform as the

Reverend Chris Green. I had the privilege of being present at his debate on Jesus at Bloomsbury Baptist Church last year.

By the way, Mr. Williams has actually moderated some of the debates that I've done. I know he moderated the debate with Adnan Rashid a number of years ago.

So he has been present for, I think, a majority of the debates that I've done in London. I'm not sure why he bothered, given that I am an extreme fundamentalist.

The Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, said, If anyone bears witness that there is no deity save God alone, who has no partner, that Muhammad is his servant and his messenger, that Jesus is

God's servant and messenger, the son of his handmaid and his word, which he casts into Mary and a spirit from him, and that paradise and hell are real,

God will cause them to enter paradise, no matter what he has done. And I do so bear witness.

The Qur 'an counsels Muslims. Invite people to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best.

Indeed, your Lord is most knowing of who has strayed from his way, and he is most knowing of who is rightly guided.

God also instructs us, and do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation, except in a way that is best, except for those who commit injustice among them.

And say, we believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, and our

God and your God is one and the same. Just about to write the section on that very ayah of the

Qur 'an, and the assertion that your God and our God is one God is the same.

I actually know that most Muslims understand that only in the context that Islam is claiming that the

Father of Jesus Christ is the one God, Allah, and is the same

God the Jews worshipped. But they will recognize that who we worship is different than who they worship, in the sense that we clearly believe that the

God we worship is Triune. The problem that raises is, why didn't the author of the Qur 'an understand that?

Why didn't the author of the Qur 'an understand that the God we worship, the author of the Qur 'an clearly distinguishes the

Father as Yahweh alone. The New Testament does not do that, but the author of the Qur 'an clearly did not know that the

New Testament identifies Jesus as Yahweh. There are many Christians today that don't even know that. So it would be very understandable why

Muhammad wouldn't know that. But again, the Islamic perspective is the Qur 'an wasn't written by Muhammad.

And so what Muhammad did or did not know would be utterly irrelevant to the content of the Qur 'an. Because it is a divine revelation, dictated by Allah to Jibril, on Laylatul Qadr, sent down all at once, but given to Muhammad over time, from 610 to 632

A .D. And it is unto him that we all surrender ourselves. The history of religions teach us that people are adept at turning individuals into what they never were.

Now this sounded very much, interestingly enough, and I wonder how much of it was borrowed from one of my previous opponents, but this sounds very much like what many atheists do in trying to say that, well, you know,

Jesus, it's the evolutionary thing applied to Jesus.

Jesus was just a mere prophet and then he evolved. Now, of course, I would point out that many scholars would look, even at the earliest biographical material of the life of Muhammad, and would see clear evidence,

I think there's clear evidence, definitely, even in Ibn Ishaq, of this kind of developmental concept in regards to Muhammad's life.

But, for those of you that are interested in this, and sort of a preemptive strike against this very perspective that will be enunciated by Mr.

Williams, right now I am preaching a series of sermons, and in fact I did so last evening.

Oh, someone remind me, I did record last evening, and I have not yet uploaded it to Sermon Audio, I need to do that, it's on my iPad.

It's amazing, the quality, the sound quality that the iPad gets. It's really cool to be able to start that thing up, start the recording, go use it for my

Bible, then stop the recording, and all at the same time. It's great.

Which, for a lot of smaller churches, might be a way around some of the recording problems they have. If you use an iPad,

I have, I'll have to look up, I think it's called Audio Memos or something like that, but it's a great little program, and it does a great job recording what you're doing while you're using the iPad for other things.

And that's what's recording, it's just recording as you go along, then when you get done, you stop it, I drop it in the

Dropbox, and then convert it to the proper format, MP3, up to Sermon Audio, which I will do,

Lord willing, if someone reminds me, after the program today. And back to the subject here, having had a geek moment there, excuse me, had a geek moment, it happens.

You just had a geek moment too, we both just had geek moments. His included Power Tools, mine did not include

Power Tools, mine included apps on an iPad, yes. And his included, and then there was light.

Ah, okay, well good, so I'll be able to see at my desk now, that's good. What was I talking about?

Oh yes, preemptive strike. This is that time during the summer when

I have all the preaching to do for a couple weeks, when we get rid of Pastor Fry for all of one weekend, which was last weekend.

He'll be back this weekend, but I'm preaching. And so I've got four sermons in a row, and so I felt it would be best time -wise to combine things.

And so, Sunday morning, Sunday night, last night, Wednesday night, and then this Sunday morning and Sunday night,

I am speaking on the subject of the testimony of the

Gospel of Mark to the Deity of Christ. And I am doing so in the context of responding to the constant repetition of what you're going to hear in this presentation.

And that is basically, well, you know, Mark has a very human Jesus, and John has a very divine Jesus, and then

Matthew and Luke are in between, part of the journey upwards to the divine Jesus stuff. And that is repeated so often that it's taken as an axiom, but it is also so easily challenged and so easily refuted.

And the vast majority of the people who repeat it are not people who've studied Mark and studied Mark fairly.

They're people who have read too many Bart Ehrman books, and who get their theological perspectives not from the text or from direct study, but from somebody else, in essence.

And so, the first two sermons are already up on Sermon Audio. I'll try to get the other one up from last night, this evening, and then this coming weekend, so you might find those on Sermon Audio.

In antiquity, Enoch, who according to the book of Genesis was the son of Cain, eventually morphed into Metatron, the occupant of God's throne.

Metatron? I thought he... Oh, that was Megatron! I'm sorry, I had to say that.

At least that is what we are invited to believe in the Old Testament apocryphal book of Enoch. In the 7th century

AD, the Muslim Caliph Ali, the cousin and son -in -law of the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, was thought by a few extremists to be the incarnation of Allah, a trend he vigorously opposed.

In our own time, the Rastafarians transformed Haile Selassie, even during his lifetime, without any encouragement from him, turned him into the lion of the tribe of Judah, their messiah and an incarnation of God.

So history shows us that the religious imagination has a gain. Now, by the way, let me just point out something.

The Haile Selassie stuff and all this kind of stuff, what was the context? Was the context strict monotheism?

The monotheism, the Jews for which they had been persecuted, for which they had suffered, for which they were known, is that the context of these things?

You know, it's sort of important in evaluating whether what you're talking about is really relevant or whether it's not.

And I suggest to you that the fact that the deity of Christ comes first and foremost out of the context of Jewish monotheism, not pot -smoking polytheists, but Jewish monotheism, and a people who had in their recent past, in the preceding centuries, suffered severely for their commitment to that.

If you don't take that into consideration, you're not doing serious history, you're not doing serious theology. Not even close.

Again and again, piled layer upon layer of legend upon its heroes and saints.

I could mention other religious figures such as the Buddha and the Virgin Mary. How about Muhammad and the idea that a light comes forth from Muhammad's mother's stomach and you can see

Basra? How about that? That might get thrown in the pile too if we're just throwing these things around.

To whom prayer and worship are both given today. So it is natural to wonder to what extent the early

Christians did something similar with Jesus of Nazareth. Here is the

Christian creed. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ. Now notice, this is a part of the

Christian creed. It didn't start with the monotheism part. It didn't start with there's one creator part. Skip past that.

I mean, I agree with what's said, but you've got to acknowledge the whole context.

The only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very

God or very God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the

Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man. These extraordinary words express the faith of the

Christian church since it formulated them at the Council of Nicaea in 325

AD. They do, but those same thoughts and same context had been expressed by faithful Christians long before the

Council of Nicaea. I think that's important to recognize as well. Jesus identified unequivocally as very

God or very God of the same substance as the Father. In a word, Jesus is God.

However, unknown to the vast majority of Christians who faithfully fill the pews each week, since the 19th century, historians of the

Bible have attempted to look afresh at the person of Jesus of Nazareth to see what his life signified to those 1st century writers who wrote the

Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Oversimplification, major oversimplification there.

It's not just the 19th century. German rationalism came much earlier than that. And the majority of the quest for the historical

Jesus arises out of those particular movements. Again, movements that from a worldview would be completely inconsistent for a

Muslim to embrace, but are any of us overly shocked that, once again, we're going to find evidence that Muslims will embrace a worldview in criticizing the

Bible that they will not embrace in examining the Koran or their own stories? Now, it's important to understand that the

Bible is a library of books written over a period of a thousand years or more by mostly unknown authors.

Today, Christians still disagree about which book should be in the Bible. Catholics think it should contain 73 books.

Protestants, 66 books. Most Orthodox Christians think it should contain 78 books.

Now, notice the use of Bible here, not

New Testament. And I would just simply direct anyone to the debates we've done on this particular subject.

I think the evidence is very strong, very clear. When the Apostle Paul says that the oracles of God were entrusted to the

Jewish people, and when we allow the historical evidence to stand for itself, we know which books were laid up in the temple long before Jesus came on the scene.

And they did not include the apocryphal books or the deutero -canonical books, as they are noted or described today.

But, at the same time, if the existence of debate over time is evidence that we don't know what the

Bible is, then, to be fair, the issues in early

Islam in regards to the numbers of surahs, in regards to the differences that are documented in regards to Ubaid and Kab, Abdullah ibn

Masud, and Uthman, and so on and so forth, would be just as relevant and would be given just as much weight.

Whether they are given as much weight or not, well, we're not going to find out in this particular debate. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church believe the

Bible contains 81 books, the highest figure of all. Jews believe the Bible contains 24 books.

Now, notice the inconsistency here. The Jews believe the Bible contains 24 books, and he was just comparing numbers of books based upon Old and New Testaments.

That is an obvious error on Williams' part, a very basic error, and it also is not an accurate representation of what the

Jews believed in regards to their own canon, because the number of books that he was just mentioning in regards to, say, our own view of 66, includes counting each of the minor prophets as a separate book.

The 24 in the Hebrew canon includes them as one book. The Hebrew canon is identical to the

Protestant canon. The 24 books of the Hebrew canon are the 39 books of the

Protestant canon. So to have said that accurately, he would have had to have said, however, the

Protestant canon is actually identical to the Jewish canon, and there is almost no meaningful difference amongst any of the

Christian groups in regards to the New Testament. But to say that is to ruin your entire point, but it would have been somewhat more accurate.

For tonight's discussion, as a courtesy to Chris, I will refer only to the Protestant books of the

Bible, for though only a minority of Christians use this reduced version, Chris is an evangelical

Protestant. This reduced version. This shows a tremendous amount of ignorance on Mr.

Williams' part in regards to the nature of the deuterocanonicals and to their content as well.

There is absolutely, positively nothing found in the Apocryphal Books that would be in any way, shape, or form relevant to the debate topic that Paul Williams was supposed to be debating this evening.

None. This is little more than an attempt to poison the mind and to communicate that, well,

Christians don't really know. And this is not unusual. I have said for many, many years that back sometime in the 1980s, the folks at Catholic Answers decided that when a debate's not going well, wait until a later point in the debate, throw out the canon issue, and realize that given the knowledge of most people in the audience and the knowledge of most

Protestant apologists as well, there's no way on earth in the reduced time they're going to have that they can even begin to make a meaningful presentation on the subject of the canon.

And then you can just hope that people say, well, if that's that complicated, I guess we just need somebody to tell us which books are in the

Bible, so I must need to be a Roman Catholic. So what you've got going on here is, throw out canon issues at this particular point in time, recognizing that to even begin to give accurate information, start going into the historical documents, demonstrating the

New Testament view of this. The New Testament never cites from apocryphal books as Scripture.

They clearly knew they existed. That in and of itself is an argument. If they knew they existed and even make allusions to them, but do not cite them as Scripture, that means something.

It's very, very important. It seems to me to be a nice rhetorical debating trick, but it's not really relevant to the actual topic of the debate.

The New Testament contains four ancient biographies of Jesus called Gospels. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Careful readers have long recognized that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are quite similar, although not identical.

Students of the Bible refer to the first three Gospels as the Synoptic Gospels, because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, with the same wording in Greek.

They are so similar that most modern scholars think they are interrelated. The scholarly consensus is that Mark was the first to be written.

Matthew and Luke then used Mark as a source, as well as a hypothetical saying source called

Q. I think this is the most plausible explanation, although a few scholars disagree.

Actually, a lot of scholars disagree, but I would be very happy to admit that there is a majority of folks who today hold to the theory of Mark in priority, but it needs to be recognized for what it is.

We do not have any manuscripts that have dates on them that say, ah, here is

Mark, he came first. Ah, here is Matthew, here is Luke. And there have been numerous studies that have argued for all sorts of other perspectives on this particular subject.

It is the current most popular theory. I think it raises more questions than it actually answers.

And given that it's the most popular theory amongst individuals who have reason to attack the inspiration and consistency of Scripture, I think that needs to be taken into consideration as well.

To take Matthew as an example, he relies on Mark as one of his sources, but he clearly thought

Mark was inadequate and incomplete. Now, how does anyone know that?

When I compare sections of the Qur 'an where the same story is told and one section of the

Qur 'an tells it with more details than the other, would I be allowed to say clearly whoever wrote this surah was using the other surah but did not think that it was complete?

If not, why not? Oh, you say you know that Muhammad wrote all these.

What evidence do you have? We say the Holy Spirit is behind all the New Testament, but if you're free to just dismiss that, then why do you demand something that you will not give to us?

Let's just be consistent, apply the same standards, and recognize that there are those who engage in New Testament scholarship because in the

West, you can engage in destructive scholarship of the New Testament. You can be the inveterate enemy of the

Christian faith, and you will probably live a long life and be rewarded financially for doing so.

That's not going to happen in Afghanistan. That's not going to happen in Pakistan. That's not going to happen in Egypt or in Saudi Arabia, where you have religious police.

And so we have many more liberals in the West, and in fact, all Muslim liberals live in the

West, recognizing that if they were in a Sharia -driven country, they would not be

Muslim liberals. So this is something that I think is easily recognizable.

Sometimes Matthew paraphrases Mark. Sometimes he deliberately alters Mark. I wonder if Paul Williams would, on a fundamental and foundational worldview issue, accept the assertion that similar language may well be due to the activity of the

Spirit of God. Is that even a possibility? Because that's not allowed to be a possibility by someone like a Bart Ehrman, by liberal scholars.

That's not even allowed into the conversation. If there is similarity of language or it places identity of language, then it has to be taken in a naturalistic perspective.

It has to indicate copying. That's just all it can be. And if you even raise your hand in class and say, but what if the

Spirit—that's not allowed. That's not allowed. That's completely allowed for the Quran.

Got to have that. That's fine. You know, angels dictating words to Muhammad and his scribes getting everything exactly right, and everybody memorizes things exactly right.

That's a given. That's okay. Can't question that. But the idea that the

Gospel writers might actually have been drawing from an oral tradition based upon eyewitnesses and all these people who had witnessed these things, well, no, no, no, no, no.

You've got to assume a naturalistic perspective. I hope you see the inconsistency that is absolutely forced upon the defender of Islam at this particular point.

This shows us that for Matthew, facts could be changed to enhance his message.

Notice he said facts. So paraphrasing means changing facts. Just keep that in mind.

That's a big leap. Not substantiated by anything, but it's a big leap. A good example of this change is to note the negative portrayal of Jesus' disciples in Mark.

They are shown as hard of heart and timid, and they repeatedly fail to understand Jesus' message.

Matthew has a very different, positive picture, perhaps wanting to show the disciples as good role models for Christians.

He is happy to change the facts of history to fit his point of view. Now notice, no examples are given. Anybody who reads

Matthew and Mark knows that the disciples are seen to not understand.

They argue with one another, even toward the end of Christ's life. The idea that Mark and Matthew have different audiences, and therefore present different elements of the story, that's irrelevant.

What we can do is, this is the same type of, let me just make a general summary statement and not provide any evidence of this and back it up type of thing, as the people who say, well,

Mark is just the human Jesus, and John is the divine Jesus. And it's so easy to punch holes through this kind of stuff.

But again, consider the debate's supposed to be on Jesus here, and now a

Christian would have to give a presentation on Old Testament canon issues, on New Testament canon issues, on Synoptic Gospel relationships, etc.

And who is this meant to impress, evidently? Not those of us who know these things, but it's meant to impress the

Muslims in the audience, and to keep them from hearing the message of Jesus. It's just plain as the nose on your face.

Compare, for example, Mark chapter 6, verses 51 to 52, and Matthew 14, 27 to 33.

Likewise, it is clear that... Well, I guess we're not going to take time to look at those, but let's go back and let's listen to it.

...of Jesus' disciples in Mark. They are shown as hard of heart and timid, and they repeatedly fail to understand

Jesus' message. Matthew has a very different, positive picture. Perhaps wanting to show the disciples as good role models for Christians, he is happy to change the facts of history to fit his point of view.

Compare, for example, Mark chapter 6, verses 51 to 52, and Matthew 14, 27 to 33.

Likewise, it is clear that... Okay, all right. I'm doing all this on one computer, so I had to...

I have four screens, and getting the mouse back across four screens... Stop, stop!

Mark 6, verse 51. Then he got into the boat with them, and the wind stopped, and they were utterly astonished.

For they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened.

And so, here in Mark chapter 6, you have the story of the walking in the water.

And seeing them... When it was evening and the boat was in the middle of the sea, he was alone on the land. Seeing them straying at the oars, the wind was against them.

At about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea, and he intended to pass by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost who cried out.

For they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke at them and said to them, Then he got into the boat with them, and the wind stopped, and they were utterly astonished.

For they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened. And so, here you have

Mark, most people believe he's representing Peter's perspective, giving an honest insight into the fact that even in the presence of Jesus at this particular point in time, that they've seen the miracles, but it has not dawned upon them.

Now, what happens when you assume that Matthew's sitting there, and he's got

Mark in front of him, and he goes, you know, I want to be nicer to them. Now, this isn't the real

Matthew, of course. This is some later redactor claiming to be

Matthew. So there's lying involved, in essence, forgery or something like that. Let's go back to what

Seth's point of view. Compare, for example, Mark chapter 6, verses 51 to 52, and Matthew 14, 27 to 33.

So, let's go over to Matthew chapter 14, and this is probably going to get us right close to the end of the time.

Once again, notice one of the major differences here. Mark doesn't talk to us about Peter's failure.

Matthew does. And Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you command me to come to you on the water.

And he said, come. And Peter got out of the boat and walked in the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became afraid and began to sink.

He cried out, Lord, save me. Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him and said to him, You of little faith, why did you doubt?

When they got in the boat, the wind stopped, and those who were in the boat worshipped him, saying, You are certainly God's Son. So, the idea being, well,

Matthew doesn't record the hardness of heart that is mentioned when

Jesus gets in the boat. But what he sort of forgot to mention was, he had just documented the lack of faith on the leader of the apostolic band.

A little fellow by the name of Peter. So, why would he repeat it?

He's given more of the details. And he actually simply points out,

You of little faith. Mark 14, verse 31. Why did you doubt?

Oh, there's your evidence! I'm sorry. That's evidence of two writers drawing from the same oral tradition, writing to two different audiences, emphasizing different aspects and saying the same thing.

That's all that is. But see what happens when you start with the assumption, Well, what we're going to do is we're going to assume the certain relationship.

We're going to reject every other possibility. It can't be drawing from a common oral tradition. No, no, no.

He's got to have the exact written text in front of him. And now we can enter into Matthew's mind.

I wonder why Paul Williams doesn't do this with the Quran. Why doesn't he look at the differing statements in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah?

Or the places where there are differences when the Quran tells the same story.

Why doesn't he enter into the mind of the author then and say, Ah, you see. Why doesn't he do that when the

Quran draws from pre -existing historical sources that were ahistorical, but the author of the

Quran doesn't seem to know that? Why not sit there and go, Hmm, well here the author of the

Quran clearly thinks that the infancy gospel of Thomas is a historical source.

Why not do that? I mean, it would be consistent to make that application, right?

If not, why not? Those are the questions that inquiring minds want to know.

Likewise, it is clear that there has been a development in the way Jesus is presented in the pages of the

New Testament. Now where have we heard this before? I started playing

Shabir Ali saying that on this program back sometime in 2005, I think.

So we're looking at about seven years of that now. And it certainly is a common thing.

But what you need to understand is, the whole reason that you have

Mark and then Matthew, Luke, and then John is because of the acceptance of a certain theory in regards to the nature of the

New Testament books. And that is that they're evolutionary. And that Jesus wasn't what

John says he was. But let's be honest, they also don't believe that he was what

Mark said he was. But he was closer to Mark, so that's got to be the first one. And then the others build upon that.

See, that's what you've got to look at. Well, we'll pick up with that. There we go.

We'll pick up with that the next time we do Radio Free Damascus. Which could be the very next time we do

Dividing Line. Who knows? I want to try to get through this debate, or at least a major portion of this debate, before I head to the

United Kingdom in just a matter of weeks, Lord willing. Thanks for listening to the program today.

We'll see you next time. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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