Colossians 3 in P46, Hagmann's Take on the Dialogue, Beginning of Review/Response to Abu Zakariya

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and we're back here. This morning

I thought it was Friday. It's like, oh no, I've actually got an extra day. That's good.

It's been a long week, to put it mildly. So I want to start off with something edifying before we get to anything that's not edifying today.

I try to make everything edifying as best I can, obviously. That's an interesting shot. We brought it out far enough now that you can see the

Borg cube and the Enterprise. That's good. Some people on Twitter this morning were saying that we need to get to the real sinful issues with James White, and that is

Coogee sweaters, bow ties, and Star Trek. Oh, and you say amen. Thanks. Appreciate that.

Really appreciate that a lot. I'm not going to go there.

Anyway, last evening

I spoke at church, and I've done last two

Sundays and last two Wednesdays, and I was struck by the text that I was dealing with.

And let me send you this real quick. The website's throwing me a curve, but that's okay.

We'll get it fixed here. There we go. Come on.

There we go. Are you getting that? Window, Chrome, Manuscript Workspace.

I'll let you play with that. If we can't bring it up, can't bring it up. But I chose last evening to speak from Colossians chapter 3, and what

I'm putting on what I have on my screen anyways, evidently it's not working appropriately for some odd reason, but is

P46, Papyri 46, the 175 to 200 papyrus that is a collection of Paul's writings,

Paul's major writings. And interestingly enough, after Romans comes Hebrews, then

Ephesians. There you go. And we could actually zoom in on the papyrus if you want to as I get to it.

And I brought this up not because I'm going to be showing you any textual variance or anything like that.

It's just, to me, when talking about a text like this, it is nice to be reminded of the fact that what we are reading is exactly what came from the

Apostle himself and has been transmitted to us down through the ages.

Despite the hatred of mankind, you can see this here. And what's interesting is it sort of starts here at this line, right?

Ah, stop that. This line, don't do that. Right here. And that's the beginning of verse 1.

So it's almost like Stephanos got the verse division right there and it was predicted by the writer of P46 many, many years ago.

But what it says, it starts off with if underneath the

Alpha and Omega symbol there. Let me see here. I just, there we go.

Drag that down there. Yeah. If therefore you have been raised together with Christ.

See, there's the Chi Omega with the line over top.

So it's an Omen of Sacra. So if you have been raised together with Christ.

And the use of I here, if, in the original language is not introducing something like, well, we're not sure, something like that.

It's since. Since it is the established reality that you have been raised together with Christ, therefore do something.

Well, what are you supposed to do? Well, you are to be thinking upon the things that are above.

Set your mind on the things that are above. And what

I basically raised to folks last evening at PRBC was the connection between what

Paul says here and what I had preached on Sunday. Sunday morning, specifically, from John chapter 11.

And I had been struck by a connection that I had not seen before, which is one of the good things,

I think it's good for ministers to, even if, I'm not one of those folks that says, sorry Steve, but I'm not one of those folks that says every single sermon has to be a verse -by -verse exposition.

I mean, that's normally what I do, that's what I'm most comfortable with, but I'm not going to be one of those folks that says every single sermon has to be this.

But it's awfully good to do that, because when you do that, you are forced into the text to a much greater depth than when you're doing merely topical -type sermons.

And I was struck with some things on the Lord's Day from John chapter 11, especially, and I didn't have time to grab

P66 or something like that and pull up John chapter 11 and look at the manuscripts there, but especially

Jesus' words, the one living and believing in me.

And I often warn people when we're extremely familiar with a particular passage.

When we, in John chapter 11, we've all heard it used in sermons at gravesides and funeral homes, and we know it so well that there's a great danger that we will not hear it because we know it.

And I was struck with the one living and believing. Two present tense participles, articular participles, so they're functioning in a substantive fashion, functioning as action nouns in essence.

The one living and believing in me. Now, believing in me, that was used in the preceding verse.

That's fairly easy to understand. It's ongoing action, which in John is very significant, over against point action, where you don't have the continuous belief.

And in John, that point action belief is almost always non -saving faith.

But it struck me that the living is also in me.

The living and believing in me. It's not just the one living out there someplace, and then believing in me.

Both are connected together. So it's the one living and believing in me. The one living in me.

The one living in me. What does that mean? How are we to understand that?

How do you describe someone as the one living? The one living in me. The one living in Christ. And really, when you think about it, the

Apostle Paul picks that stream of Jesus' teaching up and incorporates it tremendously.

And I think here's a good example of that. Because what Paul is saying in this text is that you have died, and you have now been raised up with Christ.

Since there is this new reality, this new reality of what it means to be a Christian, is that you've died, and you have been raised up with Christ.

There is this new spiritual existence that is that of the redeemed, the elect of God in Christ Jesus.

Union with Christ, spiritual resurrection, all of this clear

Pauline theology. Since you've been raised up with Christ, then you are to set your mind upon, be thinking upon the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth.

And then he goes on to say that we are to seek after. So we are to think upon and seek after the things that are above.

And the reason is because that's where Christ is seated, the right hand of God the

Father. And so if we are in Him, then we will be seeking the things that are where He is.

He will define what the focus of our reality is, not the things upon the earth. That's one of the real problems of the word -faith -prosperity garbage, is that it's focused upon us, rather than recognizing that we are to be focused upon where our life is.

And that then leads us to Colossians 3 .3. For you have died, and your life has been hidden together with Christ in God.

And you can see that right here. Yeah, you can see the thing moving right there.

You've died, and here's the... Maybe I can... No, it won't let me do that.

I was going to try to draw something on it, but it's right here. Kekrepti. Kekrepti, right there.

Yeah, there it is. Kekrepti has been hidden together, sunto

Christo, with Christ in God. So, here's the now and the not yet, the realized, not yet realized, eschatology, all of that kind of stuff.

You've died, yet you're living. As Paul says to Galatians, I've been crucified together with Christ, nevertheless

I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. So where is my life? Well, it's not here on this earth.

And therefore I should not be investing my life in the things of the earth, but the things that are above, because my life has been hidden together with Christ in God.

That's the message of this tremendous text. And here, I could be wrong about this, but I think it's a fairly safe guess that that's probably the earliest example we have of those words.

I don't have my text in front of me to see if there's any other papyri that would have this.

But it's certainly one of the earliest, if not the earliest example we have, of these particular words.

They go all the way back to that point in time. And they continue to have reality to us today.

You have died, and your life has been hidden together with Christ in God. Anything that touches your life, good or bad, has to have been allowed for a purpose, because your life has been hidden with Christ in God.

That's an amazing thing to consider. It's an extremely encouraging thing to consider for the believer.

And it's right there in the text in front of us.

So I shared this with the folks last night, and it connects together very much with Jesus' words, the one living and believing in me, that union with Christ, which is then going to come out even more explicitly in John 17.

You and me and I and you, the spirits indwelling us,

John 14, verse 23, a text like that. But once again, the beauty of the many themes woven together in Scripture, this is really where you find the beauty of Christian theology.

Unfortunately, certain views of Scripture prohibit you from being able to see these things.

Because if you're taught, you cannot connect these things. If you're taught, you cannot see the same truth being spoken in different words by Paul or Jesus or whoever in the

New Testament, then you're really left without anything to address at that particular point in time.

So think on these things, our lives, no matter how much we are focused upon the things that are going on.

And it's right for us to do the things that God has called us to do. It is necessary for us to do the things that God has called us to do.

We are to take care of our business in this life.

We are to take care of our families, and we're to pay our bills, and we're to be people that bring honor and glory to God.

I get that. That's all perfectly, totally 100 % correct. That's not the same thing as setting your mind on the things that are below.

We mind those things and do the things that are necessary to be in obedience to God. But you know what you think about in those down times.

You know what you think about when your mind wanders.

What is it that you focus upon? What is it that really means the most to you?

That's the question that you have to ask. And our minds should be focused upon those things that are above, where Christ is, the worship of Christ, those things like that.

So just some devotional thoughts to get us started here. I know I need to think upon these things because it's been an interesting couple of weeks.

I've learned a lot over the past couple of weeks.

I've learned who my real friends are. There are certain people who say, we have great respect for Dr.

White, but they're sitting around just waiting, just waiting. If they sense any blood in the water, they're going to be piling on, just piling on.

And you learn a lot at times like that. You really, really do. And I have over the past few weeks.

Now, toward the end of the, in a fairly short period of time,

I want to start, and it's going to be difficult to do this, but I want to start giving a response to,

I'm going to have to move this over here so I can get it tall enough to be seen. There we go.

I went and turned that thing off. Sorry about that. Fire it back up and give you a window and give you that.

And there. I've mentioned that I want to interact with and provide a response to a book that came out, published by IERA, titled,

Jesus, Man, Messenger, Messiah by Abu Zakaria. And I think that a hard or a paper copy is available, but it was made available in electronic form first.

And so here's the cover. And I want to respond to basically the first 40, 50 pages, because that's where you have the interaction with Christianity, mainly the foundational stuff.

Actually, most of it is rather interesting as far as what it deals with. But I think once we get through that amount of material, we will have dealt with what we need to deal with.

And my hope is to do so in such a fashion that the people listening will be edified in the interaction with Abu Zakaria's discussion, specifically of the

Doctrine of the Trinity and the early history of the Christian Church. I've taught

Church history a number of times, teaching Church history right now. Just last Sunday, for example, was teaching on the aftermath of Nicaea, the time up to the

Council of Chalcedon, Eutychianism, Nestorianism, Apollinarianism, etc.,

etc. So this is sort of one of my areas, and hence I found

Abu Zakaria's discussion of it quite interesting. Obviously, I disagree.

But it seems providentially appropriate at this time to address a subject like this because of what

I have seen, especially over the past couple of weeks, in the attitudes and behaviors of people who call themselves

Christians. Now, I can't judge their hearts, but they claim to be

Christians and yet have extremely unusual views in regards to truth, in regards to Christian behavior, in regards to Christian evangelism.

I have seen, over the past couple of weeks, the dark underside of the

Christian web. There are those out there that very, very plainly are extremely afraid of there being any kind of demonstration of respect toward people that we would believe to be in error, theologically speaking.

There are many, many people who really believe that it is an act of apostasy to be kind, respectful, especially to even learn from someone who has a different view than your own.

They believe that that is an act of compromise. Now, I'll admit, the vast majority of these people don't engage in presenting the gospel outside of, in a very minimalistic fashion, in their own context.

They're not doing apologetics. They're not going out to other people. Or if they do, they sort of think that throwing verbal bombs and insulting people is the same thing as evangelism.

And so I'm very much reminded of the street screechers in Salt Lake City.

Some of you don't know what I'm referring to, but we used to go to Salt Lake City, the General Conference of the Mormon Church, every six months.

And we did for 18 years. And we would pass out tracks and have lengthy conversations.

And then all of a sudden, these street preachers showed up.

We call them street screechers because they really weren't preaching. And literally, these men would stand there with signs and yell at the

Mormons there walking by, it shouldn't be Mormon, it should be moron. And they think that's preaching.

And when people become offended, shockingly enough, they would think they were being persecuted for righteousness sake.

And so that's why they were there. That's why they were doing what they were doing. They thought they were serving

God by offending people in that way. And it destroyed the outreach. The Mormons had tried to find a way to stop us.

It took the King James -only Fundamentalist Baptist to actually do it. Very same attitude.

Those people knew next to nothing about Mormonism because they would consider it to be an act of spiritual apostasy to take the time to study meaningfully what someone was saying from the

Mormon perspective. To even read books. Because if you're reading someone's book, you in essence are investing your time and listening to someone that you would identify as a false teacher.

As someone who is not speaking the truth. But the motivation for that is so that you can speak the truth more effectively to someone who shares the same perspective.

Especially if it's the author of that book or something like that. And it just seems like second nature to me, but obviously

I'm in the minority and been proven to be in the minority. It seems like second nature to me that we would want to have accurate knowledge of the people to whom we are witnessing.

Because again, it's second nature to me that it is not only respect for the person you're talking to, and I guess many people don't think you should respect the person you're talking to.

But it's also respect for the truth, for God, for the gospel. To do your presentation in such a way that you are truthful in what you're saying.

So that you do not erect even further barriers between that person and faith in Christ.

Seems fairly basic to me, but I've learned once again, and it's not that I didn't know this, but I've just had it so strongly emphasized to me over the past couple of weeks, that for many people, that's utter foolishness.

That's utter foolishness. When I was asked by a reporter less than a week ago, why did you sit down with a

Muslim imam? And I'm like, so that he could accurately explain what he believes?

And the first words out of his mouth, this is a reporter, first words out of his mouth were, you sure are naive. You sure are naive.

And I was like, really? Okay. And you're a reporter.

Okay. Well, he was a reporter, but then later on, I found out he's written books on the immigration crisis and stuff like that.

So might be a reporter, but he has some place where he's going. Anyway, all these things that I thought were second nature,

I just have to keep reminding myself, they've been good reminder that they're not second nature to many people.

And that's why this ministry will always be a small ministry that will only be relevant to people who have the same presuppositions we do.

And those same presuppositions are based upon having a holistic, whole, consistent view of truth and a

Christian worldview. Ironically, some of the people using that phrase, worldview, are the worst people when it comes to actually being truthful about things as well.

And so anyway, I've learned a lot over the past couple of weeks.

I was informed of the fact that Brandon House appeared on the 19th.

This is only three days ago. On a, I guess it's a television program, web -based television program, something.

I don't know. I've been having some small amount of attempted communication.

I've certainly discovered that you can't really accomplish much on Twitter, because you may respond to somebody.

I even wrote one of those tweet short things where it's a big, long paragraph, and you go way past 140 characters type thing, and it just links to it.

You might as well just, it's like throwing a cup of water on the sidewalk in Phoenix over the past week.

It doesn't, it just, gone. You know, almost, no, no, that's not, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't go there. Don't go there. He's looking like a Rhodes Scholar these days, in comparison to a lot of people we're talking about.

But this fellow named Douglas Hagman, the Hagman Report, had

Brennan House on. And why

I'm playing this for you is I want you to understand how powerful poisoning the well, spinning the narrative, setting the parameters is when people have not been trained to think critically and clearly.

When people have not been trained to think critically and clearly. And we see this in politics.

We see this in our society right now. In the educational system today, unless you're getting a good homeschool education, unless you're getting, you know, unless you've got textbooks on logic and reasoning and things like that, you're not getting that in the public school system anymore.

And so what we're seeing is an entire generation of people coming up that if you can set the parameters, if you post a video, you put a title on it, you put a description on it, people will hear in what they see and listen to what you've told them to hear.

And even if what you play says the exact opposite of what you've described, they'll still hear it that way.

That's frightening. I mean, that's 1984 frightening. That's Brave New World frightening.

But that requires people to read books and literature, which doesn't have much anymore either. So even amongst Christians, amongst those who call themselves

Christians. So what happens on this report is

Brennan House provides the opening few statements that I made in the first night of the dialogue.

And, yeah, I will. By the way, some of you are saying, well,

I certainly hope you... I've got a floor director now.

I'm not used to having a floor director, but I have one now. I bet you these things can have little red lights on them.

I really bet they can. And you like toys. You like toys, so you should...

I wonder what my foot was hitting. That's what my foot was hitting.

We'll find an appropriate place. I wonder if Summer would like it. Summer would love that.

Her dad and her pastor. I'll have to take that over to Summer's place, and she'll appreciate that.

Anyway, what were we talking about? So Moses was in the bulrushes. Some of you have been saying, well, glad you've learned your lesson.

I hope you... That'll never happen again. Yes, it will.

Yes, it will. I am not going to allow the rage of men and the willingness of people to grossly misrepresent and lie about the intentions and words of others to keep us from continuing to have meaningful dialogue and discussion with people.

And in fact, we'll go more in depth. We're going to go more in depth on even more controversial issues.

And we're planning it. We're planning it. I'm not going to be stopped. Because no one has yet...

I'm sorry, all the quote -unquote biblical argumentation that I've seen so far has been sad.

I ain't marrying Muslims, not being yoked together with them and having discussions about things we don't agree on any more than I was when

I was debating them in the same way, for crying out loud. And all this stuff about spiritual enterprises and all the rest of this stuff.

Man, talk about stretching. I mean, if you had anything worthwhile... I responded to one brother.

I said, if you want something that's directly about this, let's look at what Peter said in 1 Peter 3.

There's these words at the end of his exhortation, with gentleness and reverence.

It's fabos there, but when joined with gentleness there, we know where in the semantic domain that particular translation is.

With gentleness and reverence. And I'm going to tell you something. 98 % of my critics have thrown that biblical command out the window, not only with how they have treated me, but especially with how they've referred to Yasser Khadi.

Gentleness and reverence? Ha! If you're going to look at me and accuse me of sin for obeying that commandment, go ahead.

I don't care. You are not my judge. God is. You're the one that gets to answer before Him for your ignoring that command.

Oh, and by the way, the fellow... Because now that we're on this camera, that reminded me of it. Some fellow took a clip from the last program, took it out of its context.

I was talking about the fact that I was being criticized for not preaching the gospel, and I made the comment, is there anybody doing debates that works harder at getting the gospel into their presentations?

I mean, there's only a few of us that are doing this stuff, so it's pretty easy to go get other people's debates, put them together.

Who has the most consistent gospel presentations in their debates?

And this guy puts that up. I can never support this man again because he's so arrogant. So, if I demonstrate that an argument that is being made against me, saying

I should step down and stop doing what I'm doing, is actually full of hot air, that makes me arrogant.

I'm like, what? So, I realized that was bad enough. I'm going to name names here.

JD Hall decides to comment on Facebook, saying

I had just thrown all Arabic Christians under the bus, calling me a

YouTube apologist, as if I was even addressing the subject.

Hey, I guess it doesn't really matter. JD is good at misrepresenting the Pope, and me too.

It's just an equal opportunity thing. Talk about piling on. Oh, good grief.

So, anyway. The past couple of weeks have been fascinating.

So, we go to the Hagman report here, and I'm going to stop and start it because I am so thankful that I said the things

I said right at the beginning, because everyone just has to ignore it or twist it. Here's what

I said, and I'm actually going to play it at normal speed. The tentacles from that are various.

Now, we've got a clip provided by Brandon House, who's our guest, worldviewweekend .com.

Listen to this opening statement. This is about some interfaith. I'm just going to call it

Interfaith Deception. Listen to this. I'm going to bring Brandon to talk about this because this is part of the discussion today.

We're all experiencing deception, including interfaith deception. I'm just playing it the way it came across.

I have been looking forward to this evening for a very, very long time.

It has been my desire to engage in a dialogue like this, and when the opportunity came that I'd be coming into this area,

I contacted Dr. Khadi, and I put out the call, and the church here was so kind to respond and to join with us in providing a place for us to have our conversation this evening.

I want you to understand what our motivations are this evening in coming together.

This is not a debate. Some of you have... Now, I'm so thankful that I started off right there.

It's not... You know, I knew there would be some pushback. Never dreamed it would be like this.

And yet, I started off by saying, okay, what are our motivations? Now, dishonest people are going to ignore what

I say. They're going to accuse me of being a liar, a dupe of Islam, whatever else. What has been extremely bothersome, some of my own fellow

Reformed Baptists, who you would think the default is going to be years and years as an elder in the church, hundreds of sermons, has taught all around the world, done numerous debates.

Default might be, I should probably trust what he has to say. That's his intention. Even if you disagree, obviously, the participants did not believe for a second that they were engaging in ecumenism, compromise, anything like that at all.

You would think that would be the default. It hasn't been for everybody. There have been few. I'm thankful for the few of you who have stood up.

And let me publicly say right now, if you listened yesterday, I was on Line of Fire with Michael Brown.

In the first hour, we talked about this whole situation. And at one point, you know,

I was fairly animated myself during that period of time, but Michael got animated. 90 % of the stuff he read on the air,

I had never seen. The attacks. I don't go looking for this stuff. I've had so much of it thrown at me, I don't even need to go looking for it.

But he read someone, you know, mark this James White out, and, you know, apostasy, and false teacher, and all the rest of this stuff.

And there's Michael Brown saying, you want to mark him out?

And the people supporting him, well, mark me too. Mark me out too. Just saying, I'm with this guy on this.

It'd be nice if, you know, a few folks on my side of where Michael and I disagree had been quite that bold, but that's how it's been.

But we press on anyways. So from the start, from the start,

I'm saying this is why we're doing this. This is not a debate. Some of you have seen debates that I have done around the world.

Now, this guy, this Hagman guy, I can fully understand why he might not have a clue who

I am. But if you hear someone saying that you've done debates around the world, maybe that would stop you long enough to go, you know, maybe

I should find out what these debates have been about. You know, as a

Christian, I don't want to attack someone who's actually been very actively involved in defending the faith and doing so faithfully for years.

I don't want to be careful in what I say. You would think, from a Christian perspective, that's what you'd do.

But if you listen carefully, you can actually hear typing in the background. I don't think he's listening. I don't even think he's listening.

Brent House has said, hey, there's this apostate guy. Let's let's get him. And he's not even listening.

And his comments are going to going to point that out. This is not intended to be a debate.

We are going to, of necessity, discuss differences that we have.

Differences that we have. Of necessity. Yeah, we can't have conversation without talking about differences.

He is a faithful Muslim. He believes. I saw a note on Facebook from Yasir Qadhi.

And last night, if you're not aware of this, it's

Ramadan right now. And last night is, well, let me explain this real quick. Because people do find this interesting.

I've talked about it before. Might as well do some edifying things here in the midst of the silliness. But last night was the 27th night of Ramadan.

And one of the fascinating beliefs about Ramadan, the ninth month of the

Islamic calendar. Remember, the Muslims use a lunar calendar rather than a solar calendar.

So Ramadan moves forward in our year by 10 days, sometimes 11 days, each year.

And so, Laylat al -Qadr is called the

Night of Power. Qadr is a fascinating Arabic word. It can mean just power, but it also means predestination.

And there's a lot of fascinating discussion amongst Muslims, just as there is amongst Christians, as to the relationship of the free will of man and the predestination of God.

It's just as live an issue amongst Muslims as it is amongst Christians, interestingly enough.

And, ostensibly, it is the night in which the Quran was sent down to Gabriel, the angel

Gabriel, and then Gabriel then delivered it over time to Muhammad.

And so, prayer and worship done on the night of Laylat al -Qadr is worth a lifetime of worship.

In other words, if you worship on a night other than Laylat al -Qadr, then you get the benefit of just that one night's worship.

If you worship on Laylat al -Qadr, you get a lifetime's worth of benefit for that one night. So, you can imagine if you do it every year of your life, you're getting 70, 80 lifetimes worth of, not so much merit, but blessing and reward.

There's a strong reward concept, scales. We've talked about a lot of this stuff before.

And again, our emphasis is upon the theology of Islam more than the politics of Islam.

They get rather messily intertwined at times, as we've pointed out. Anyway, so Laylat al -Qadr is one of the odd nights.

Muhammad had an odd fixation upon odd numbers. For example, he'd only eat an odd number of figs.

So, there are Muslims who will only eat an odd number of figs, because that's what Muhammad did. And so, 21st, 25th, up to 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th night of Ramadan.

Why don't we know which one? Well, there is a hadith that indicates that Allah told

Muhammad which night was

Laylat al -Qadr. But when he came into the mosque, there were people arguing about a financial issue, and it so bothered

Muhammad that Allah took the knowledge of Laylat al -Qadr away from him. So, basically, faithful Muslims will make sure to spend the nights of the 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th, so four nights, nights of Ramadan in worship in the mosque.

And that's why, for example, the man with the van that ran into people in Finsbury Park in London, that's why it was so late, was because of the primarily evening things that were going on, fasting during the day, and then the evening things going on in the mosque.

So, last night was the 27th night, so Ramadan is just about over. Last night was the 27th night, and so for many, there's actually a difference between the

Sunni and the Shia on this, but for most Sunni Muslims, that's the probable night would be the 27th.

So, last night was probably, for most Muslims, Laylat al -Qadr. And so there would have been a lot of activity going on at that particular point in time.

Now, how did I learn about that? Are there books about that? Yeah, but I learned about it first listening to a lecture by Yasir Qadhi about Laylat al -Qadr.

And for some people, can't do that, can't do that. Anyways, I'm not sure how

I got there, but let's go ahead. And again, if you think

I am going to be embarrassed by admitting that I'm a person learning,

I'm not going to be. I am not impressed by people who claim to be experts, who behave the way that people that I have encountered during the past two weeks behave.

There are people who know more about Islam than I do. There are people who know more about anything than I do.

And if you think you know everything, you scare me. Okay?

I've done a lot of studying. I continue doing a lot of studying. But if you think it's somehow necessary for someone to be infallible in a particular area, well, good luck with that.

That's sort of how cults start. Over the years that he's been a primary influence in my study of Islam, I am a student of Islam and I've learned much from him.

But the reason I specifically sought him out is because I sense in him such a kindred spirit on the other side of the chasm that divides us in regards to our theology and our beliefs.

Now, I don't know if you can hear the typing in the background now, but did you notice what

I said? Many people have focused upon the kindred spirit statement. What I was saying is on the other side of the chasm that separates us in regards to our theology and beliefs.

There is no whitewashing. There is no saying, oh, we're all on the same side. The kindred spirit is the fact that he attempts to be a consistent

Muslim. He's not just doing it because that's what he was raised in. I've told the story of why.

Why should we teach our children a book and a language they don't know if they don't actually live out its precepts.

Hey, if you want to unthinkingly close your mind and not listen to that kind of stuff, more power to you.

See you later. Don't worry about me. I have absolutely no benefit to you whatsoever.

Because my understanding of Christian apologetics is based upon a concept of truth and accuracy and consistency.

And if you don't see the necessity for that, there are unfortunately plenty of people you can go to and get much less complex, easier to understand arguments.

Go, go. Don't waste your time with him.

He is a consistent Muslim. He believes what he says. He wants to seek for consistency amongst his people and his own practice.

I can assure you that's what I was exactly thinking of at that very point in time was that story

I've told you. Listening to him on that bike ride, listening to him saying to his people, we need to be consistent here.

And so when you have two believing people, one Christian, one Muslim.

And this is where people just don't believe that such thing exists. There are

Christians who don't believe. They believe we're the only believing people and that Muslims don't believe what they believe.

So I'm not sure quite how to understand that. I'm not talking about true saving faith here or anything like that.

Obviously. I don't believe that faith in the Quran and Muhammad is appropriate faith or true faith.

And I've said that thousands of times. But I believe that the best way to communicate that to someone is not by disrespecting them, but by respecting them and making meaningful arguments in a way that they can understand.

If I'm just simply patting myself on the back with my arguments, then I'm a clanging gong and a tinkling cymbal.

I'm a noise. And I'm a stench in God's nostrils, too.

Come together and say, we need to discuss not only what divides us, but also where do we have similarities?

That's the next act of heresy on my part. How dare you note any similarities between the truth and falsehood?

I mean, aside from the fact that we live in the same nation and are facing many of the exact same pressures.

In Canada right now, they're telling Christian schools that they can't have Bibles that have offensive passages in them.

And they're doing the same thing to mosques, that they have to present transgenderism and a different view of human sexuality in mosque schools.

We're both facing the exact same thing. So what are we supposed to do about that? Just ignore that?

I don't want to talk to anybody about that because I might have to acknowledge that other person's a human being, too.

And he has a family and kids. And we don't want that to happen because, you know, that's how you become a liberal.

That's actually how you become loving and actually have opportunity to talk about what

Christ really has done in your life and model that for other people. It's a wonderful thing. How can we live in the same community?

And the most important thing is this. If we do what I hope happens this evening, we're going to do something absolutely unique.

Yeah. But I'm going to do my best to make sure it doesn't remain unique.

Certainly in the future, we're going to know exactly what we're going into. We're going to know exactly what we're going into.

And we're going to put a thing right up front of the recording explaining every word.

You know, this is what's called a debate. This is what's called a dialogue. This is this. This is that. Not that it's going to change anything.

We pretty much did that right here. You know, I mean, dishonest people are dishonest people. They can ignore anything. But we'll put it there just so that their judgment is even more just for their misrepresentation of it.

It hardly ever happens. And that is two communities where, unfortunately, there is a lot of fear on both sides.

There is a lot of misunderstanding on both sides. There is fear and misunderstanding on both sides.

And the people that are the scariest people are the people who think they understand, but they don't. And they're the ones that create the most fear.

And evidently, they have a vested interest in keeping things fearful. And as a

Christian, I want to see doors opened. Is that wrong? For these folks, yeah.

We don't want doors open. We want doors closed. To me, opening a door is not an act of compromise, because I'm confident of what

I believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you're not confident of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then you're going to want doors closed.

And this is where theology matters, you know? It really does.

As a Christian, I want you, as if you are a Christian here this evening, to not have fear of the

Muslim people, but to have love for the Muslim people. Is that a real terrible, horrible thing for me to have said?

That we should have love for the Muslim people? How many people really have given consideration to the fact that even the

Christian people in other lands understand what Jesus said, Even when they are persecuted in Muslim -majority lands, they understand what

Jesus taught. We're not even in that situation, and we can't love? What does that mean?

I want the Muslim people to understand that we care, and that we want to have dialogue, and that we're not seeking this evening to sweep our differences under the rug and say they don't matter.

Can I play it again? Because evidently, in all the versions that have appeared anywhere on the web, there's sort of a distortion or something, because nobody seems to have heard this part.

And that we want to have dialogue, and that we're not seeking this evening to sweep our differences under the rug and say they don't matter.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. And every person that has called this some type of ecumenical get -together,

How about dealing with the actual words? How about dealing with the actual reality? How come

I never see people quoting any of the stuff from the mosque? You know, where I'm explaining the

Trinity, the necessity of the death of Christ, belief in the Bible, justification by faith.

Stuff you guys get to do with Muslims all the time, right? It's just every day you get to talk to Muslims about, yeah, right.

Dr. Khadi cannot present an Islam that is just simply one view amongst many.

Now, what I was saying at that point is a very important thing. Dr. Khadi is not presenting

Islam as one view amongst many. He's not presenting some type of ishy -squishy, you know, you can be a

Muslim, you can be a Christian, you can be Jewish, you can be Zoroastrian. They're all the same.

No, it's not what he believes. It's not what he believes. I'm not going to ask him to believe something he doesn't believe. Straightforward, straight up.

And then the interruption. Eric, why don't you stop it right there. Okay, you get the picture, folks.

Okay, now, let's see what picture this gentleman...

How accurate is his understanding of just that brief introduction?

Let's find out. You get the picture, folks. This is a Christian minister, pastor, coming into Brennan House's town, basically.

I didn't know Brennan House owned Memphis. I didn't get that memo.

It doesn't matter where. Okay, bottom line is this. Here's a Christian minister singing the praises of not just Islam, but this

Dr. Khadi. Singing the praises.

Evidently, if you learn something from someone, then you're singing the praises.

Now, I've talked about our differences, but singing the praises of Islam. Now, where do you think that came from?

Because no rational person could have gotten that from what I said. I mean, you have to literally be irrational.

Your mind cannot be functioning in an appropriate, proper fashion. I mean, if you were taking a class in high school and the teacher played something and then asked questions about what was played and you answered that way, you should fail.

You should be marked wrong. You are not listening properly. Your mind is not functioning appropriately.

You are wrong. You're in error. Learn to think properly. Right? So, where does that come from?

Where does this bias come from? Where does this prejudice come from? Well, it's because I don't believe for a second this man had listened to the entirety of these dialogues.

I don't believe for a second this man could even begin to criticize this.

Doesn't have the background. Doesn't have the resources. I don't believe for a second that that person had listened to any of the debates we've done.

What happened is Brandon House contacted and said, Hey, I've got a thing here to get you a lot of click -throughs.

I've got a hot topic for you. This will get your audience going. All right, let's do it.

I think that's what you're listening to here. There's so much wrong with that, I don't even know where to begin.

Brandon, Dr. Cotty, who is he? I'll tell you, start wherever, because that just makes me want to,

I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth. There you go.

I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth. That same group or individual, you know,

I've been, this morning, both Brandon House and those folks, they keep this false narrative up.

You won't debate Osama Daqdak. And I keep going, give me a thesis, because debates require a thesis.

I've done many more debates than Osama Daqdak's ever done. By a scale of 10 times, minimally, probably more like 20 or 30.

And, in fact, I was teaching at a Southern Baptist Seminary, well, he was a student at a Southern Baptist Seminary. And I keep saying, give me a thesis.

And what comes back is not a thesis statement. I keep saying, well, ISIS is all

Islamic. What? What's that supposed to mean? I believe

ISIS is Islamic. But it's not all of Islam. It can't be all of Islam, because it doesn't represent

Shiism, right? Because they're Sunnis, and then they kill Sunnis that disagree with them, so it doesn't fit that group.

So, it's not all of Islam. So, what are you even talking about? If you can't even think clearly enough to present a thesis, then why should

I invest my time in arguing with you? Other than just you getting to have a food fight, and yell and scream, and make people think that you know what you're talking about.

But I haven't gotten a response back. And so, what I'm hearing from this hagman, and then from Bran House is, you're scared.

You're scared. And I'm just like, when did I get transported back to a playground in the sixth grade?

That's what I'm getting from these guys. And I actually would like to try to find a time.

Now, I don't think I have time this year. But to find a way to debate

Usama Daqdaq, I really would. I'm not sure on what, but here's a man who evidently, in what

I have seen of his online, just seems to mirror the far right on the

Islamic side. Just flame throwing, you know, you people are terrible type.

You know, there's no good Muslim. You're all demonized. This kind of stuff.

And it's like, but I'm not sure how you even create a thesis out of that, or if I'd even have time to pursue it.

But come up with something meaningful, guys. Can you try? I wrote a big long thing today to Brandon House explaining what a thesis is.

Because evidently, Brandon's not accustomed to dealing with that kind of thing. So here's what a thesis is.

Here's how you deal with it. I haven't gotten a response back. And what I expect to hear in the future is, you've never answered us.

That's sort of what I expect in the future. Why waste my time with this?

Because, folks, we need to recognize that, you know, I've said to some people, you know, why should

I worry about this one particular group? Well, there's like this many tens of thousands of people that listen to this thing regularly.

And my mom listens to it all the time. And she's deeply influenced by it. It's distasteful.

For me, it's, you know, I want to go home and take a shower after having to try to work through the reasoning of some of these folks.

And especially just the attitude. It's just so repulsive to me that people would approach, would try to join evangelism together with a kind of race -based or religion -based or nationality -based political hatred of another group.

When the gospel and politics end up all tied together, it gets really ugly.

And I really, really, really dislike that. So, why respond to this?

Because you need to turn a light on this stuff. Now, you turn a light on it and they start shooting at you. And that's what we're experiencing.

And I wasn't looking to do that. But now that six months after it happened,

Brennan House has decided to start this crusade. And yeah, I use that term specifically because what we have here, this was suggested to me by a nameless, faceless person.

But what we have here is the difference between the apostles' approach to evangelism and the crusaders' approach to evangelism.

Since he's decided to do that, then I don't think I have any choice but to say, wow, look at this stuff over here, folks.

As Christians, we must say, this is wrong. It is wrong to join hatred to the name of Jesus Christ.

That's all there is to it. It's sinful. It's wrong. Stop it. Stop it.

Yeah, it's not like we haven't done that before. We did that with Fred Phelps a long time ago. But there you go.

So with that having been said, I guess we're going to have to go for a jumbo edition today.

Because it's the only way to get through enough of this here to accomplish what we need to accomplish.

So let me begin my response. I do not have notes sitting here.

What I have is Abba Zechariah's book. And I've started to mark stuff. And it's just going to work through it.

And hopefully it'll be useful to everybody because these are common arguments. But I want to start off with some commendations for Mr.

Zechariah. I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of what he said. But let me start off by saying that I appreciate that this was not an

Achmed Didat book. Now, you may not appreciate that I said that.

But I've said many times, Achmed Didat's level of argumentation was not very high from a scholarly perspective.

And in comparison to a large portion of the material that I've seen, we've responded.

And I think Abba Zechariah was involved with one of the videos that we responded to, I think, last year.

Because if I recall correctly, it may have been the one I was listening to while driving back from Colorado last

July. And I'm just about to head back there again, so it'll be about a year. I think his name was associated with one of them.

I'm not 100 % certain, but maybe it was. I could be wrong. But there have been some much higher level quality videos that have been out by Muslim apologists recently.

I'd like to think that maybe I've had a small part in trying to nudge the conversation beyond the

Achmed Didat sons by the tons stuff. I don't know if it was me or just a lot of folks, but I'm very appreciative of the fact that this is material we can really dig into without having to go,

Well, here's another misrepresentation. I think they're misrepresentations, but they're on a higher level anyways.

And so I'm appreciative of that. For example, in the introduction, he says, After leaving university, my attitude matured from a knee -jerk, you are wrong, to a more introspective, am

I right? I began to properly research Islam, not because I doubted it, for I believed it was the truth from a young age, but rather because I wanted to have religious conviction based on sound knowledge rather than blind following.

That sounds like the type of attitude that we recommend in our own young people as well.

I could spend a lot of time on this, because let me just look at the chapter titles. Chapter 1,

The Concept of God and Christianity, and that's the primary focus. That's at least what

I want to get through. There might be some things worthwhile to look at elsewhere. Chapter 2, The Concept of God and Islam.

Chapter 3, The Portrayal of Jesus and Other Prophets in Scripture. Chapter 4, The Atonement Relationship Between Man and God.

Now, that might be worth spending some time on as well. Chapter 5,

Crucifixion, Indisputable Fact or the Most Misunderstood Event in History? Chapter 6,

Preservation of Revelation. That includes transmission of the New Testament. Probably going to be hard to avoid getting involved with that.

Paul, Faithful Follower of Jesus or Inventor of a New Religion? Well, I know where that's probably going. I'm afraid my

Muslim friends love to be anti -Pauline. Chapter 8, Jesus Foretold of Another Prophet After Him.

Well, we've debated that one a few times. There's even a section here,

The Great Cover -Up, Evidence of Tampering in the Biblical Accounts of Ishmael and Isaac. And then some final thoughts.

It's a 250 -page book, so there's a fair amount there. So, I want to start,

I want to be able to interact with this book in such a way.

Do you remember? Man, how long ago was this? About three years ago, possibly?

There was this, and I haven't heard anything about this guy for a long time. I wonder what happened to him. There was this real young Muslim fella that sort of became famous because of a little clip that he posted about how it's shirk to wish someone

Merry Christmas. And all the world went nuts. And, again,

I'm like, well, duh, it is, from a

Muslim perspective. There was no incarnation from a

Muslim perspective. Jesus was a mere prophet from a Muslim perspective. So, the whole idea of Christmas doesn't make any sense if Jesus isn't the

God -man. So, you know, you can argue about whether it's major or minor shirk, but I think you can make a pretty strong argument for major shirk.

So, why is everybody all angry? Well, because people don't understand those things.

And, you know, it's sort of like attacking Yasir Qadhi in a lecture on shirk to say that idolaters are neges before God.

They are abominable before God. So does the Bible say the same thing, right?

You know, I just keep hearing Bernie Sanders, you know, in Christian voices these days.

Just scary. Hearing Bernie Sanders at all is scary, but that's a whole other issue.

So, remember, I chased a rabbit there. Did you see that one? But the rabbit came back to the same trail.

It's helpful when the rabbit circles around when you get older like this. It comes back to, oh, that's where I was.

What I was saying was a number of years ago, I did this response to this fellow because, you know,

I did some digging around, found some others of his videos. And I'm sorry,

I've forgotten his name, but there was a whole presentation he made for Christians.

And so I took the time to respond to the entire presentation and I addressed it to him personally.

And I think anyone would be honest, anyone who would honestly view it would have to recognize that as wrong as I felt that he was, my whole hope was to communicate to him, in refuting his errors, the truth in a gracious and appropriate fashion, rather than just mocking him or calling him a

Mohammedan or a Sharia lover or whatever. My desire would be that this young man who may have never heard a meaningful gospel presentation might hear a

Christian who actually does understand Islam providing a response. And that's what

I wanted to do in that context. And that's what I want to do with Abu Zakariya, especially this first chapter.

I really want to dig into because it deals with the Trinity, it deals with biblical texts, it deals with the early church. I've written on the subject many times, lectured on the subject many times, this is sort of an area of mine.

And that also means I may go ahead and deal with the transmission stuff later on if we have time to do so.

But I want to do it in such a way that honestly, my desire is at the end of this review that Abu Zakariya would be willing to come on the program.

And not necessarily if he doesn't want to debate the issues, at least say, well, thanks for the review and here's some thoughts in response, here's some pushback, maybe

I have a point here, whatever. In other words, I'd like to not only bless the

Christian people in providing a response to these objections, but do it in such a way as to hopefully have some impact upon Abu Zakariya and those who would argue in a similar way to him.

And as long as you can do it that way, why not? Well, it takes a lot more work. It does.

It takes a lot more work, takes a lot more thought, takes a lot more time. Slash and burn is a lot easier.

Insult, repel, a lot easier. It does not take a lot of work to do that. If I wanted to start off this review by calling

Abu Zakariya names, using disrespectful terms for him, that's like throwing red meat to an audience

I don't want. But if that's your audience, then that's what you do. You start off by insulting people and, well, the man's a false teacher.

The man's not an apostate as far as I know. From reading a book, I don't think he's ever been a

Christian. So he's not in a discipline, he's not an apostate. And can you be really certain that someone has really communicated to him with clarity the message of the gospel?

Personally, I'm going to leave those things to God. I'm going to bless rather than curse. And if you want to curse rather than bless, you get to answer for that.

I don't. I don't. So, with all that said, my hope is that as I respond to this, that Mr.

Zakaria will be willing at the end of all this to maybe come on and we'll have a discussion about it.

Under the doctrine of the Trinity, folks,

I wonder how many of the people sitting in our churches could describe the doctrine of the

Trinity as clearly as Abu Zakaria did. Perfectly?

No. I will have some criticisms. But he cites my book, though I'll have to be honest with you,

Abu. You cited from my book, and yet I could not think of almost any of the texts you cited or the objections you made to the doctrine of the

Trinity that I did not address in my book. And you didn't deal with any of those things.

Well, there might be two places you didn't cite it, but I sort of got the sense you were trying to respond.

Like the fig tree stuff, that's not in the book, but I've definitely dealt with the fig tree argument numerous times, and we'll get to do it again.

I still think you guys just need to just go, eh, not a good argument, let's move on.

Because it's not even a Quranic argument, really. I suppose you could make a stretched argument that it might be, but I don't think so.

Certainly the author of the Quran didn't know that particular story, so you really wouldn't have anything to lose by abandoning it.

It's not a good story. Good argument. Anyway, put simply, it is one

God in three Persons. The Persons of the Trinity are not to be confused. So the Father is not the

Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. All three Persons of the Trinity are said to be co -equal and co -eternal, and, quote, each is

God, whole and entire, end quote. Any objections to that? Nothing about, you know, three

Gods, yet. That's an accurate presentation.

One of my problems is there doesn't seem to be a firm understanding of the difference between being in Person.

In Mr. Zakaria's discussion, that's going to come out a little bit later on.

But that is sort of right there. When it says, each is God, whole and entire, that's referring to the Being of God.

And the Persons is a different category. But at least it was there.

And then he provides the rather standard, you know, triangle.

God in the center, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, the

Holy Spirit is not the Son, the Son is not the Father. That particular one. Not the one I normally use, but similarly.

A key element of the Doctrine of the Trinity is the Incarnation of God. Now, that's not how we would normally put it.

We would say the Incarnation of the Son. But the very next line is, this teaches that the second Person of the

Trinity, the Son, took on human flesh in the bodily form of Jesus. Bodily form.

Okay. All right. But, thus, when Mary gave birth to Jesus, God entered into the creation, the

Son specifically. Jesus is said to be the God -Man who has two natures.

One divine, one human. Well, there you go. One person, two natures. Council of Chalcedon. It's got the hypostatic union correct.

And I just remind folks, how many folks in your Sunday school class would be this accurate?

If you gave them a quiz this Sunday, how many? Now, I would like to say,

I would like to think that my Sunday school class would do fairly well here. But you might say, that's because they've been abused as having you as their teacher for so long.

Well, that's probably true. Jesus is said to be both fully God and fully man.

As a result of the Incarnation, humanity has been permanently incorporated into the Godhead.

I would disagree only in the sense that the hypostatic union is with the

Son. And I'm not sure what you mean by Godhead. If you simply mean that since the

Son is fully God, then this is a permanent relationship. Fine. But if there is any sense of an ontological alteration of the being of God, I would say no.

Have to be careful at that point. But listen to this. This is something that, again, you've got to give credit where credit is due.

If I'm going to criticize later on, you've got to be accurate and give credit where credit is due.

Even though there are a lot of people that don't believe you should ever, ever do that. Jesus's humanity is not something that can be discarded or dissolved back into the

Godhead. Even after his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension back to the Father, Jesus will forever exist in heaven as a glorified man, albeit

God at the same time. Yeah, that's exactly right. And yet a lot of Christians, when you ask them, well, what did

Jesus do with his body? I've never even thought about that. I don't know.

And yet our union with Christ, the fact that he's the God -man, all these things, part and parcel of this.

As a Muslim, I was raised to believe in the pure monotheism of Islam that teaches

God is one, not only in essence but also in personhood, and that God is distinct from human beings.

Well, I would simply respond and say that as a Christian, I was raised to believe in the pure monotheism of Christianity that teaches

God is one, in his essence, but three, in personhood.

That's not a denial of monotheism. We have to have proper categories here.

What you're talking about is Unitarian monotheism versus Trinitarian monotheism.

But monotheism refers to the being of God and that God is distinct from human beings.

Of course he is. Of course he is. He's the maker of human beings. He is the creator of human beings.

And as you well know, I'm sure, the primary issue between us is if God created a perfect human nature, why can he not join a perfect human nature to himself so as to glorify himself in the incarnation, giving himself the salvation of a particular people?

That really is the issue. Then I got my quote. I did get quoted in the book here.

So it took me a long time to grasp the Trinitarian concept of God. It turns out I'm not alone in struggling to grasp the

Trinity. According to scholars of Christianity and defenders of the Trinity, many Christians who profess to believe in the Trinity, in fact, do not understand the doctrine.

Dr. James White, one of the foremost apologists of the Trinity today, thank you very much, wrote the following,

For many Christians, the Trinity is an abstract principle, a confusing and difficult doctrine that they believe, although they are not really sure why in their honest moments.

That's been quoted a lot. And sometimes people try to make that mean that, well, that means it cannot be understood or something like that.

That's not what I'm saying. I was pretty clear about that, but I don't think he was misrepresenting me here. I'm just saying it's been used that way.

And Abba Zachariah goes on to say, This is evident when one discusses the doctrine with the average Christian. Folks, you got to understand.

Well, okay, some of you don't want to, but put yourself in, and I've said this again, there's nothing new about this, but, oh, yeah,

I just looked in channel. Akhadi, Abu Musab Awajdi Akhadi.

Yeah, that was the fellow that I was talking to quite some time ago. I don't know what's happened to him.

Maybe someone could look and see if he's posted anything recently. He's still active. Anyway, put yourself in the shoes of, for example, my

Muslim friends down in South Africa. One of the first things that Rudolf Bossoff said to me when

I went down there, when I landed, the first time I went down there, was most of the people who call themselves

Christians in South Africa are not even functionally Trinitarian. And so if you're a

Muslim and 90 % of the Christians you've talked to don't understand the doctrine of the

Trinity, they're not themselves functionally Trinitarian, can you really expect that the

Muslims are going to just automatically accurately identify what we say and what we believe when the majority of the

Christians they talk to are ignorant, untrained, possibly heretical?

Yeah. So this is evident when we discuss the doctrine of the average Christian. How many videos are there online and YouTube of Muslims going out in London?

And this is one of the problems identifying, see, from the Muslim mindset of many Muslims, if you're walking down the street and you talk to a

Londoner, they're a Christian. Because it's a Christian nation, isn't it? State church, all that stuff.

Hopefully you all realize, no, no, very small percentage of actually believing Christians left in places like that.

In my experiences of interacting with Christians, a common way of trying to explain the Trinity is the use of elaborate analogies.

The following examples are quite commonly put forward. The Trinity is like the three parts of an egg, the shell, the white and the yolk.

Yep. Heard that one. The Trinity is like three forms of water, ice, liquid and vapor. Even though it spells vapor,

V -A -P -O -U -R. You guys don't need the extra U's anymore. You really, really don't.

It would shorten your word count too. Well, actually, I guess it wouldn't. The Trinity is like a man who can exist as a father, a son and a husband all at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've all. Yeah. As someone in channel says, that's modalism,

Patrick. The Lutheran satire guys, they've got to be pretty proud of themselves.

Because when you can put out a cartoon video, that large number of people will understand you go, that's modalism,

Patrick. I wonder how many hits that one's got. That's exactly right.

If you use the Trinity is like a man, father, son, husband. Yes, you are a modalist.

Congratulations. You're a heretic. So he says, such analogies are highly problematic.

The egg analogy doesn't work because the doctrinist Trinity states that each person, father, son, Holy Spirit is fully God. One wouldn't say that the shell is fully an egg, the white is fully an egg, or the yolk is fully an egg.

Yep. It is only the totality of the three parts, shell, white and yolk, that would make a complete egg.

The water analogy doesn't work either because it implies that God first manifests himself as father, then as son, then as Holy Spirit.

These forms are temporary and never coexist, thus violating the principle of the doctrine that the persons eternally coexist.

Finally, the man analogy also fails to encompass the doctrine of Trinity. The father, son, the Holy Spirit aren't simply three functions or roles of God.

They're said to be three distinct persons. So far, I, Zakaria, would be passing my

Trinity test. And a lot of other folks wouldn't be. So, but, almost out of time, but my first criticism.

The simple fact is that no analogy will ever be complete. Now, why would I say that?

Because God's unique. And therefore, any analogy which is a comparison to creation will always fail because God's unique.

That's not what I, Zakaria, says. Although this is not appreciated by the average Christian that I encounter on a day -to -day basis, it is something that is fully acknowledged by Christian theologians who freely admit that the

Trinity cannot be explained. No, you may have found some that imprecisely say that, but grab yourself some of the systematic theologies down here, and we can very precisely explain the

Trinity. He's going to end up talking about the term mystery.

Say, well, it's a mystery. It cannot be explained. No, the doctrine can be. The nature of God cannot be grasped fully by a finite human being, even on the basis of his infinitude and eternality, which you confess along with us.

And I would suggest that from your perspective, you would say that you can explain that Allah is eternal without ending and without beginning, but you cannot comprehend it as a finite human being.

To even try to comprehend an eternity of time is beyond our capacity as time -bound beings.

So, mystery, it normally means an element of divine revelation, that we are dependent upon God's revelation of these things.

It's not something that we can come to by just simply reasoning from the creation around us. And Muslims likewise believe that there are things that we know only by revelation, not by simple observation.

This gets into the whole area of natural theology and things like that, and I have brought these things up in the past in talking about Islam.

We may get into some more of it in the future. But I do take exception to the assertion that, well, we really can't know what the doctrine of the

Trinity is. And that's what the point beginning on page 7 and going to page 8 is going to be.

But we've run out of time for the beginning, and that's why we'll pick these things up. In fact,

I'm going to... Hey, this is a neat way to mark things in this. That's how we'll do it. That's how I'll mark where I am. So, we will pick that up the next time we continue our response to Abu Zakariya and his book.

And we do so, hopefully, once again, as an example of how you can engage these issues to the benefit of the saints, while at the same time, hopefully, adorning the gospel of Jesus Christ and inviting those who disagree to consider well the responses that are being made.

I think that's consistent with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and so we want to be able to do that.

Thank you for listening to The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, we will be back with you next week.