John 11, Surah 3, and Consistency

And greetings, welcome to the dividing line, I don't like when the guy operating the soundboard and everything else is going, hey it's not working!

So are we working, we're running along, okay, alright, I'm not the techie guy, oh

I am, sorry techie, but I don't have any control over that over here. Welcome to the dividing line, only one hour today because I'm doing something this summer or I'm trying to do something this summer while dodging all the incoming insanity, that by the end of the summer, this is going to be interesting, it's going to be a really,

I'm doing a written debate with someone pretty well known and I was actually a day late because of all this other silliness, but I think it's going to turn out to be really interesting, the way it's being done, and so I actually have to record my opening statement, so I've already written it, and then we're doing audio, each of us is recording our opening statement in our own voices, which is,

I've never done that before, so it could prove to be interesting, it's a really important topic, and I hope

I can actually focus more upon it in the future. Speaking of which, I want to do two things at the beginning of the program today, they're actually related, you just have to sort of trust me how they're related, and I will be relating it to recent events as we get farther down in the program, but some of you know that I'm doing a sermon series based on P45, Papyrus 45, the manuscript that I'm supposed to be working on,

PhD program at Northwest University in Pachastrum, South Africa, and I'm currently in John Chapter 11, we had a really good crowd

Sunday morning, not so good Sunday night, but Sunday morning definitely, and we are in the key theological section of Jesus speaking with Mary and Martha prior to going to the tomb for the resurrection narrative of what happens with Lazarus, and Rich is going to drive me crazy today because I keep looking up and, oh, oh, we got to get those little red lights, they have little things on top, they've got them up there, so we need a little, not a flag, no, little red lights will be fine,

I'm sure they have them on eBay or Amazon or something as to which camera, because he's, you know, we had visitors in, we had

Josh Bice and Tom Buck, and hey, both have short names that start with a

B, and Brannon starts with a B, don't have any idea what that means, but I'm sure some folks over at World View Weekend will come up with something.

Sorry. Anyway, what was I saying? I don't know what I was saying. Anyways, so we are at that key section prior to the resurrection of Lazarus, and so I was looking at what

I've been trying to do is provide a bulletin insert and so I'm not going to get it done today, but hopefully

I'll have to come down here tomorrow to get the next bulletin insert done, and on the one side is the papyrus, a fairly decent scan of the papyrus in black and white, and then my translation on the back, and I've been providing this as we've been, we started in John Chapter 10, and now we're in the

John Chapter 11. So I am looking at the text, we're continuing on this

Lord's Day, and I'm looking specifically at the reality of the fact that when you look at what

Jesus says to both Mary and Martha, there is two levels at which

Jesus is speaking. When he first says, your brother will rise again, those words are interpreted within the context of Jewish eschatology.

The family were well taught and there's going to be a resurrection at the end times.

They weren't Sadducees, they were Pharisees, they believed in resurrection. I know that he will rise at the resurrection.

And Jesus' response is, I am the resurrection and the life. And then when he starts talking about living and believing in him and not dying even though you die, and obviously there's a continuation from back in John Chapter 5, the dead will hear the voice, the

Son of God will come to life, and even there you had the spiritual idea that Jesus raises people to spiritual life as well as the eschatological fulfillment of Christ's role in the end time as the final judge involved in the resurrection, so on and so forth.

And so the question comes up, how did Jesus intend

Mary and Martha to understand his words in what context? Does he recognize that they will only really get the spiritual application after the resurrection of Lazarus or is it after his resurrection, the coming of the

Holy Spirit? There's all sorts of issues that come into this. The point is this, that when we look at the text, for example, if you want to put the text up here just so we can take a look at it.

John 11 -25, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

Do you believe this? She said to him, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, even he who comes into the world.

Or this phrase here is really interesting, eistan kosmon er kamanos, the one coming into the world.

That's pretty high Christology, which of course the liberal automatically goes, well, obviously she couldn't have known this yet and this is later reflection and these are just words being put into people's mouths by John and blah, blah, blah.

The reality is we aren't told almost anything about Jesus' relationship with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus other than it was clearly a close relationship.

He was very, very, very close to these individuals and we don't find them anywhere else, which again, the skeptic goes, ah, see, it's just all made up.

And I go, no, the other gospel writers don't talk about this because they're still alive and it's too dangerous to talk about them.

There's all sorts of extremely plausible logical reasons why only at a later point in time when

John is writing his gospel, would he make reference to incidents like this? It really bugs me, the skepticism that is the foundation of even a lot of the stuff, you go to the

Christian bookstore, buy commentaries on John, they're going to be filled with skepticism and it's because it's taught in our seminaries too.

Anyway, sorry, I jumped off the rails there. So when she makes this very orthodox statement, you know, does she fully understand what

Jesus has said when he says, I am the resurrection and the life? I mean, think about the amazing words that are found.

We've heard them so many times. We've heard them at every, almost every funeral we've ever gone to, right?

I'm the resurrection and life. Put those words in the mouth of any other person, any other person in scripture and it's pure blasphemy.

It's pure blasphemy. It's another one of those places where we have clear evidence of the exalted nature of Jesus and yet we very frequently skip right by it because we're so familiar with the text.

We've just seen it so many times, I'm the resurrection and life. What does that mean? I am the resurrection. Resurrection is a future event, isn't it?

I am the resurrection, personalizing the resurrection. The beauty of this is that once you see this in the light of the union of the elect of God with the son of God, so that as I've said so many times before, his death becomes our death, his burial, our burial, his resurrection, our resurrection.

He is the resurrection and he is the life. So when you have resurrection, then that resurrection takes you into that life and that life which we have, again,

John 11 has to be seen in its connection with John chapter five. Already passed out of death into what?

Into life. That's the position of the believer in Jesus Christ. So point being that when we look at this, the double meaning that John is communicating, how can we know what it is?

Well, we can because of the nature, not only of John's gospel, but of the

Bible as a whole, because we can look to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and we have a sufficient revelation.

We can bring all of these things together and have meaningful confidence that we are handling the text accurately.

This goes back to the nature of the New Testament text. And when we approach it, not with hyper skepticism, but with faith, we are able to utilize it in such a way that with confidence we can say, this is what this author is saying.

And again, I only mention this not only because of skeptics outside of the faith, but because of the reality that there are so many within the faith today that because of their low view of scripture, they have to chop the

Bible up and they can't, they've been taught that basically it is inappropriate to allow

Pauline theology into the examination of a

Johannine text. Don't get me wrong. When you do meaningful exegesis, you start with the author.

But you don't, if you have a high view of scripture, you don't have to stop with the author. And I'm talking about the human author here.

Obviously, I believe there's a divine author, but for many, you can't go past the author.

And if your view of scripture is low enough, you can't even actually assume consistency on the part of the author either.

But what's beautiful is the depth of this revelation that you're able to see when you allow, when you have a high enough bibliology to allow the beautiful harmony of scripture to come together.

So this material in John 11 takes on tremendous meaning at that point.

But in the process, just for the geeks out there in the world,

I give you, I know I'm not going to do this all the time, but you know what

I had to do. I mean, if I'm working on the bulletin insert, this is part of my discipline in sermon preparation right now.

Oh, did you see that? Can we give

Rich a golf clap? I think Rich needs a golf clap. Okay. Because not only has he done the other angle thing here, but did you see that he minimized the manuscript over to the right -hand side instead of to the left -hand side?

I really think... Now, I have to say here, in competition with the graphics that one might be accustomed to see on, say,

Apologia, or something like that, this is as... What's that?

Apologia. Apologia? Gia. Yeah. Didn't I teach you Greek once? You did, and I know better, but I know how they pronounce it too.

And it's like, when they came into studio and they started moving... I can still change your grade after 20 years. Well, when they started moving things around,

I had to move a camera around. I let them know, this is about as extravagant as we get here.

Yeah, that's true. So this is, you know... But I do... I have to admit, the background, you got to admit...

Now, the problem is, you zoomed in so much, we don't have the Enterprise up above. We've only got the... There is the picture of the

Enterprise up above, but we do have the Enterprise E, and the

Borg stuff, the Borg cube. And since the cube's at an angle, it sort of looks like it is moving, you know, like the cubes do.

And then the Tribbles. And I did... By the way, for everybody who was concerned about the dying

Tribble, it's been rejuvenated.

I wasn't going to say resurrected in the middle of what we're talking about, but I did replace the batteries.

So it's in better shape now. So anyway, thank you very much for completely...

What was I talking about? Are we talking about something religious? Yeah, yeah, I know. We're looking at the manuscript, and I was just impressed that you put it down to that side.

But I realize for most people, this looks like just a bunch of squiggly stuff.

It's not. For example, see the Nomina right up here? Nomina Sacra, right there. There's Jesus, and there's

God. Nominative form there. That's the nominative there too. Are there some other

Nomina? Yeah, here's one right here. But anyway, what is sort of background information for some folks here?

People like to ask, how do you prepare for sermons and stuff like that?

Well, right now, obviously, since I'm doing something based on P45, part of the sermon preparation is the translation of the text in the papyrus itself.

And for the preceding, for leaves 15 and 16, this wasn't all that difficult to do.

But now that we've moved on to the next leaf, this leaf is much more damaged than the preceding ones.

So there's gonna be a lot more fill -in. And so when I translate it, there'll be brackets around a lot of the stuff that I'm gonna be filling in.

But what's interesting is we have a textual variant in P45, which is not unusual.

One of the issues in dealing with P45 is the fact that the scribe is not like the scribe of P75, who is doing just a letter by letter transcription.

P45 is much more phrase by phrase. So there are things that disappear that we sometimes can't tell.

Oh, boy, we're really getting... Sometimes we... I like that. I'll have to admit that sometimes we can't tell why something is gone because of the fact that sometimes it's a stylistic issue.

So what's interesting here is right here is...

I realized that for most that looks like CIC, because there's a hole right there.

It's actually not a... This is Sigma Iota Sigma in the unseal text.

I still prefer calling it unseal rather than majuscule. I realized that Dr. Metzger changed all of our terminology a while back on that.

But I was taught unseal back in the 80s, and it's stuck with me. And there you go.

But what you need to understand is that's the end of a word,

Sigma Iota Sigma. And what is the end of a word? Well, if we go across, you'll see that the line above, we only have a portion of it right here.

Now, obviously, if P45 was all we had of the Gospel of John, we'd have a problem here, but it isn't.

I just ran out of time. I didn't have time to go grab P66. I have it on my system, but I didn't have time to grab it to throw it up so you could see it.

But we know we have even earlier papyri than this.

And of course, we've got all the papyri afterwards. And so we know what's there.

And so we know that Jesus said, Ego I me,

I am. And so here's the ego I me part right here. That's an epsilon, gamma.

And yeah, I know it's damaged right there, but you can see the epsilon Iota, the beginning of the mu right there. So once you get used to how this scribe forms his letters, then even when there's holes and things like that, you can figure out what it is.

So here's the line above, I am. And then the next line begins with cis.

And then it's ha pisteuon ais. So the one believing ais me, in me.

And again, one of the interesting features of P45, the micro omicrons, the omicrons are always much smaller than any of the other letters in the text.

So okay, now he's just playing. Okay, now he's just having fun.

Can you see that? He's just having fun. See, if I hadn't done the golf clap thing earlier, this wouldn't be happening.

But I've created a monster. So that's pretty soon. It's gonna be sparks and flames flying out of the manuscript.

And it's gonna be reversing color and, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. I shouldn't have even said that, actually.

Anyway, well, here's the point. The term resurrection is anastasis.

And it ends with sigma, iota, sigma. So even though it's missing on the other side, we know it was there.

So I am the anastasis. But where's chi haze away and the life?

It's not there. It's not there. In P45, Jesus says, I am the resurrection, the one believing in me, and goes on from there.

And the life is not there. And if we go back to accordance here for a second, you can see right there.

See that? So here you have ego, I, me, hey, anastasis,

I'm the resurrection, chi haze away. So you've got this little square right here. Click on that.

And let me make this larger. See right there, there's the same one.

And P45 is noted as the only, well, actually, there's one other manuscript,

Greek manuscript. And then Sinaitic, I think that's the

Sinaitic Syriac and Cyprian. So when you see, if you have a critical edition of the

Greek New Testament, it's sort of fun sometimes to actually see the manuscript and go, oh, wow, what's in the notes actually matches what's in the manuscript.

It's actually there. So that was just for you geeks. There's a variant there.

There's really no question that chi haze away is original. One of the questions would be, will

I be able to identify sort of an overall scribal tendency on the part of the scribe

P45 that would allow me to address that particular issue? We'll see. That's some of the work

I'm supposed to be doing right now. But anyway, so there's some little geeky stuff for people who want geeky stuff, some theological stuff, people want theological stuff.

Here's the point. The point is that when we do

New Testament exegesis, we have a sufficiently wide amount of material that allows us to truly get into the text itself and to allow that text to give us insights in interpretation.

We can look at Paul's doctrine of resurrection, we can look at John's doctrine of resurrection, we can put these things together.

They shine light upon one another. The analogy of faith frequently is what has been called in allowing the

Bible to interpret itself on a theological level. Now, let's shift gears completely and let's look at the

Quran. For the past week or so, there has been a tremendous amount of vitriolic, condescending nastiness posted around the internet about how little

I know about Islam. What I haven't heard is any meaningful criticism of this.

I would think that if you're going to demonstrate how dumb

I am, maybe this would be the way to do it.

But the reality is I haven't gotten much criticism because of the fact that I approached the text of the

Quran in a fair fashion. I tried to allow it to speak for itself.

Yes, I spent a lot of time looking at the early Tafsir literature. Tafsir is commentary on the

Quran. I looked at Ibn Kathir a number of times, Tafsir from Jalal -I -An and even had some of my

Arabic speaking friends look at some stuff from Muqatil, which is not available in English, to my knowledge, at least in a full sense.

I did some work on this particular book.

One of the texts that was fascinating to me that I'm going to use as a counterbalance to what we were just looking at in John chapter 11 is from Surah 3.

You can confirm this if you would like by looking at the study

Quran. I think it's right at a year old now. If you look at the commentary offered by these numerous

Islamic scholars from numerous different traditions on Surah 3, there is a general agreement that at least a major portion of this particular

Surah is in reference to an encounter that is recorded in the

Islamic sources. I've never seen any non -Islamic sources that would confirm the coming of a delegation from the

Christians in Najran to have a meeting and even the study

Quran uses the term debate with Muhammad regarding his teachings, especially in regards to Jesus.

Now, there are numerous different accountings of this encounter between the

Christians from Najran in the Hadith sources and in other commentary sources.

I speculated in the book that there seems to be some development, some evolution, even in the

Islamic accounting of this. The arguments presented by the

Christians, if they're accurate, those Christians didn't know much about their own faith, unfortunately.

So, it's more likely anyways that if there was such an encounter, the

Christian side has pretty much been lost and it's been primarily filtered through Islamic understandings.

And there's a lot of ancient Islamic misunderstanding of what

Christians believe. I think in the Quran itself, but even leaving that aside, clearly in Ibn Kathir, you will find a great deal of misunderstanding of the

Christian perspective. And so, I want to look at what the study

Quran says and I'm going to go ahead and give you the, I actually have it, I'm sending it from the study

Quran and starting at verse 41.

He said, my Lord, appoint for me a sign. He said, your sign is that you shall not speak. Okay, verse 42. And remember when the angel said,

O Mary, truly God has chosen thee and purified thee and has chosen thee above the women of the world. I don't know why they chose to use

Elizabethan English. I don't know why they chose to use these and those, but they did and it's a bummer. Verse 43, or Aya 43,

O Mary, be devoutly obedient to thy Lord, prostrate and bow with those who bow. This is from the tidings of the unseen, which reveal unto thee, and thou was not with them when they cast their lots to choose who among them would care for Mary, and thou was not with them when they were disputing.

Now, I stopped just for a moment and it seems to me in the background here, one of the primary issues that I think our

Muslim friends need to deal with is the use of sources by the Qur 'an, the use of uninspired sources by the

Qur 'an, specifically Proto -Gnostic sources, and especially things like the

Proto -Evangelium of James. And I think I can make a bit of an argument here about, and thou was not with them when they cast their lots to choose who among them would care for Mary.

That's coming from non -biblical sources, probably from the

I think that's a problem. And of course, if I were just to simply jump up and down and scream and say every

Muslim's a demon like certain people do, you probably wouldn't even think about what I'm saying right now.

But since I don't, then maybe you will consider that. Verse 45, when the angel said,

O Mary, truly God gives thee glad tidings of a word from him whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, high honored in this world.

I think I just found a typo. Unfortunately, to read the text in here,

I need to double check that. 45. Nope.

High honored in this world. That's weird. And the hereafter. I wonder if that's supposed to be highly.

You would think so, but anyway. High honored in this world and the hereafter.

And one of those brought nigh. He will speak to people in the cradle and in maturity and will be among the righteous.

Now, there's a connection between Surah 3 and Surah 19. By the way, the conversation, this meeting with the

Christians from Najran, there's a couple different dates, but it's in the last year of Muhammad's life.

And there's a difference of about one year between the various sources, but very close to the end of his life.

So here, even toward the end of his life, this idea of people speaking, he will speak to the people in the cradle, which you find fulfilled in Surah 19.

But that comes from the Arabic infancy gospel, which is only about 150 years old at that time. Again, source critical problems in utilization of the materials from the

Quran. And will be among the righteous. She said, my Lord, how shall I have a child while no human being has touched me?

He said, thus does God create whatsoever he will. When he decrees a thing, he only says to it be and it is.

And he will teach him the book, wisdom, the Torah, and the gospel. And he will be a messenger to the children of Israel.

Truly, I've brought you a sign from your Lord. I will create for you out of clay the shape of a bird. Then I'll breathe into it and it'll be a bird by God's leave.

And I will heal the blind and leper and give life to the dead by God's leave. And I'll inform you that about what you eat and what you store up in your houses truly is in that is a sign for you if you are believers.

And I come confirming that which was before me, the Torah, and to make lawful unto you part of that which was forbidden unto you.

And I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. So reverence God and obey me. Truly, God is my

Lord and your Lord. So worship him. This is a straight path." Now, this is put in quotation marks. There's a lot of stuff.

I don't have time today to go into everything that we could go into here. But what is fascinating is verse 49, very clearly dependent on the infancy gospel of Thomas.

And the infancy gospel of Thomas is not a reliable historical source. It is a it is a proto -Gnostic, it is a proto -Gnostic source.

And it's ahistorical. And yet, the author of the Quran shows no discernment in the utilization of the sources that end up in the text itself.

So you have a mixture then, the blind, the leper, these are things from the New Testament. In my reading of the

Quran, it seems very clear to me that the author of the Quran is going on oral stories that he's heard.

There's not a reliance upon written sources. That's why it would be very easy for him to confuse the oral stories that he's heard, not knowing what comes from the

New Testament, what doesn't, what the content of the New Testament is, what a gospel is, the gospel versus the gospels.

All that type of confusion seems very evident in the pages of the Quran itself, in the misunderstanding of the author as well.

And so you have verse 50, very similar to Surah 5, 40, 44 and following.

And I come confirmed that was before me, the Torah. So Jesus confirms the Torah, make lawful unto you part of that which is forbidden unto you, which is interesting, maybe recognizing the looser understanding of the

Christians or just don't have to keep everything that's in the Mosaic law, so on and so forth.

Truly, God is my Lord and your Lord, so worship him. This is a straight path. This is, as it's been properly recognized, the

Jesus of the Quran is an argument for monotheism. He's an argument against the author's understanding of what

Christians were teaching about Jesus. And so this, to me, if you are a

Muslim today that makes arguments based upon skeptical or liberal theology in regards to the reliability of the text of the

New Testament, I don't know how you can look at this text and not at least laugh.

Because on any redaction criticism, source criticism basis whatsoever, how can you seriously accept that Jesus ever said these words?

Because as a Muslim, you do believe that he did. How can you? Mishmash of sources and not the slightest bit of evidence in any source whatsoever until the

Quran of Jesus saying these words. I mean, any one of you, whoever quotes from Bart Ehrman, had better at the same time say, by the way,

I don't really accept what's found in Surah 3. But you do accept what's found in Surah 3. And so you're being grossly inconsistent.

If on the one hand, you quote Bart Ehrman, and on the other hand, you go, yeah, but yeah, not a shred of manuscript evidence, but hey, you know, it was sent down.

So we just believe. Okay. But for a long time,

I've been saying we need consistency in the standards that we're utilizing here. And it seems to me that this material is particularly susceptible to strong criticism historically in regards to the meeting of the

Christians from Najran and the sources that are utilized and how it's put all together and how it's functioning as very clearly a polemical argument here in the middle of Surah 3, which comes toward the end of Muhammad's life.

So then it goes on to say, when Jesus sends disbelief in them, he said, who are my helpers unto God? The apostles said, we are

God's helpers. We believe in God, bear witness that we are submitters. Our Lord, we believe in what thou has sent down and we follow the messenger.

So inscribe us among the witnesses and they plotted and God plotted and God is the best of plotters. Now that's a, don't even have time to get into that, but there's all this stuff out there in regards to God being a deceiver and all the rest of this stuff.

When he said, oh, Jesus, I shall take thee and raise thee unto me and purify thee of those who disbelieve.

Now that raising unto me, again, we can spend a lot of time on this. There's all sorts of questions that could be raised as to what the background of this is, what it means, where it's coming from, how it can be consistently interpreted, all sorts of things like that.

But one point just in passing, when I deal with the text of the

Quran, I attempt to do so in a fair fashion.

And it seems that to do so is considered compromise on the part of many. And again,

I've been doing this for a long time, not with the text of Quran. I didn't start studying the issue of Islam until 2006, but I've always tried to be fair with the text of the

Book of Mormon too. That's why there are certain arguments against the Book of Mormon I don't use and have never used and I can prove it.

Remember the Book of Mormon says Jesus was born at Jerusalem? You've never heard me picking on that because I know that Bethlehem is in the region of Jerusalem.

And so you could probably make an argument because I know there are places in the Old Testament text where we have to look at a regional utilization to harmonize texts.

And so I don't use an argument against somebody else's book, even if I believe it's a false book. I don't believe

Joseph Smith was a true prophet. I don't believe Muhammad was a true prophet either. I can't. But just because you don't believe someone's true prophet doesn't mean that gives you the right to then misrepresent them and misrepresent what they wrote.

And that's what's gotten me into trouble. Well, it's one of the things that's gotten me into trouble is that if you try to be fair, if I'm trying to apply exegetical principles, the text of the

Quran, that are consistent with how I deal with the Bible as well.

In any ancient text, I want to know what the original author intended to communicate. You do that and you end up being pilloried on the internet as a

Muslim sympathizer and all the rest of this stuff. Because look, there are just a lot of people out there that just don't believe that you should extend any kind of fairness to anyone who isn't a

Christian. I reject it, reject it, reject it. I have to, because I follow him who is the truth.

It's all there is to it. You have to be truthful with everything and everybody. That's how it works.

Anyway, I'm trying to get to a point here and we've got stuff to do. Purify.

Then unto me is your return, I shall judge between you concerning that wherein you used to differ. And as for those who disbelieve, for the coffers,

I shall punish them with severe punishment in this world and the hereafter, and they shall have no helpers.

And as for those who believe and perform righteous deeds, he shall pay them their rewards in full, and God loves not the

Now, who are the coffers? Who are the submitters? If this is about that encounter with the

Christians from Najran, can we tie this together with Surah 5?

This is what we recite unto thee of the signs and the wise reminder. Truly the likeness of Jesus in the sight of God is that of Adam.

He created him from dust and said to him, Be, and he was. So here's the direct assertion.

In opposition to whatever it was the Christians from Najran were saying in this context, Jesus is a created being like Adam.

Then it says, The truth is from thy Lord, so be not among the doubters. So this is supposed to be divine revelation.

And to whomsoever disputes with thee over it after the knowledge that has come unto thee.

So here's this revelation from Allah, Jesus is a creature. Once that comes, and if they dispute that, say to them,

Come, let us call upon our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves.

Then let us pray earnestly so as to place the curse of God upon those who lie.

So the idea here is that Muhammad said to the Christians from Najran, All right,

I've received this message from Allah. I've now delivered it to you. And so let's get together and we will call a curse down upon whoever's lying.

This is the idea that is being presented. This is indeed the true account.

There is no God, but God. That's the exact same phrase. Look it up in the Arabic. That's the exact same phrase that keeps occurring after every time the

Quran says, say not three. And it's directly related to the

Shahada. So this is the statement of Islamic monotheism.

So the true account is Islamic monotheism. There's only one God. And truly

God is the mighty, the wise. And if they turn away, the kafirs, the unbelievers, then God knows well the workers of corruption.

Say, O people of the book. Now, the Al -Kitab can be

Jews or Christians, but in this context, it's clearly the Christians. O people of the book. Now, what's fascinating is that this is the section that remember when the less than forthright ecumenical dialogues were going on only a few years ago, which

I criticized, but knowingly and fairly by actually reading the people that were doing it and pointing out the problems of the books,

I didn't put pictures of people that were doing that in turbans on the internet. If you call that apologetics, you go for it.

This is the text that people were referring to. O people of the book, come to a, remember what was called?

Common word. A word common between us and you that we shall worship none but God, shall not associate aught with him and shall not take another as lords apart from God.

Well, that sounds wonderful, but you got to read it in context.

It's in the context of challenging the Christians to bring a curse down upon the liars that the revelation from God is

Islamic monotheism, a Unitarian monotheism. And in the people of the book here, the

Christians are being called to a word common between us and you that we shall worship none but God.

And that's in the context of saying Jesus is like Adam. He's a created being. Don't worship Jesus. And shall not associate aught with him.

That's the sin of shirk. And shall not take another as lords apart from God.

And if they turn away from this call to Unitarian monotheism, then say, bear witness that we are submitters.

We're the ones submitting to Allah. Oh people of the book, why do you dispute concerning Abraham as neither the

Torah nor the gospel was sent down until after him? Do you not understand? Behold, you're the very same who dispute concerning that of which you have knowledge.

So why do you dispute concerning that of which you have no knowledge? God knows and you and you not.

That's really not smooth for a modern translation. Abraham was neither

Jew nor Christian, but rather was a Hanif, a submitter, and he was not one of the idolaters.

So obviously, there had been a discussion of the continuation of the faith of Abraham that came out. And then later on, oh people of the book, why do you disbelieve in God's signs while you are witness?

Oh people of the book, why do you confound the truth of falsehood? Here's the point, and unfortunately, running out of time.

When I deal with the Quran, I attempt to deal with it in a fair and honest fashion.

Part of the reason for this is many of my Muslim friends do not deal with the Bible in a fair and honest fashion. And if I'm going to point the finger at them and say, you need to deal with Bible fairly,

I've got three fingers pointing back at myself. It's called consistency. It's called truthfulness. It's called doing what

I've been doing for three decades when it comes to apologetics. Now, I just think all of this is a matter of doing the right thing as a

Christian. What does this have to do with the recent flood of attacks upon me and my ministry?

Well, it's a matter of consistency. And there are people who sell fear.

For example, I guess

I'm going to have to bring it up over here. I thought I had this, I thought I saved it. Someone has been posting just recently the fact that if you go on the

Worldview Weekend webpage, for a mere $99, you can buy a package to prepare you to deal with Islamic attacks.

$99. That's pretty cool. But if you're selling that kind of material, there it is.

Let me pull this up for you, because I've said it, so I need to see.

That is tweet deck, I believe. Oh, you got it there?

Sorry. Products. Understanding and preparing for the terrorist threat against your family, community, and nation.

It's sort of hard to see there, but that's $99. You can buy this from these folks.

I think if you see the dialogue that Yasir Qadhi and I had, you might not be as fast to grab your credit card, to part with your $99 when you watch something like that.

You might actually, instead of doing that, might actually spend your time praying to have opportunity to get to know some of these folks and to risk yourself, put yourself out there to be a witness to those folks.

That might be what you do. That's what the great fear is. The great fear is these folks present a monolithic

Islam so that it's us versus them, us versus them. There can be no getting together in the saying, here's what

I believe, here's what you believe. Not can we find some place in the middle. That's not what happened in that dialogue.

Anybody who represents it that way is lying through their teeth. They're lying through their teeth and they know it.

They know it. Robert Spencer decided to come out against me on Jihad Watch.

I am so thankful that on worldview weekend, they've put a clip from the beginning of the dialogue.

Spencer has them out there because I realize people who don't care about truth, they're just going to watch that and go, oh, that white guy is terrible.

He's horrible. What can I care? I can't care about people who aren't concerned about the truth.

That's never been our audience. I started this program out showing you a textual variant in a manuscript.

Most people don't care about things like that. They don't want to know about the

Greek text. They don't want to know where we got the New Testament. Those are not our audience.

I know that. But for people who actually do care, they might see that and go, well, that's interesting.

He actually said we're not. Because what was fascinating was on the worldview weekend clip, they actually played the section where I said we are not sweeping our differences under the rug.

It's almost like God just sort of blinded them just long enough to get that out there. And I just have to trust that the honest people are going to go look it up, find it, and be blessed by it as the people that were there were blessed by.

By the way, have you noticed people are using this anonymous, no name provided thing about, well,

I was there and it was terrible and blah, blah, blah. I can't go into all the details behind this, but the folks at the church have let me know that's not a church member.

That's that's actually someone who is very well known for not believing that church is even

Orthodox. But again, the the attitudes that have been expressed by by Christians about this astounding.

That in that encounter where afterwards you had rooms full of Christians and Muslims not sitting there going, hey, we all believe the same thing.

Let's do Chrislam. Never happened. Never happened. Never would. You had people who could honestly say,

I believe this, you believe that, and I care about you. Let's talk about it. That's what they fear.

That's what scares them to death because you're not going to them. You see, they're the experts. They're the experts and they want you coming to them and getting all your information from them.

And they sell bias and fear and bigotry. And that's where they get their money.

And they're scared to death of this. Scared to death. Sadly, I was going to review a video that was put out a couple of days ago by a reformed individual,

Keith Thompson. I was really disappointed when he put the initial video out, because it was filled with misrepresentations.

And so I noted what they were. I put on Facebook, I said to say that I'm soft on Islamic violence is wrong.

I just recognize where it comes from. Um, to say that I excuse or defend the

Aisha situation, it's just a bold faced lie. I've explained this over and over again. I have said that it is not the best

Islam, best apologetic approach, that there's a stronger approach. Um, so I was,

I really, I, I don't know much about Keith Thompson, but I had a pretty high opinion just from the few things

I had seen. And so I interacted with him and I responded on Facebook.

And at least he called me brother James, didn't call me a demonized person. But then

I got up this morning and you have it. And he puts out another video.

For some reason, he doesn't put himself on it. In other words, doesn't use a camera. It's just audio. And this is the, uh, this is the image he put out.

Now for Micah, the great tragedy of this is just how badly it was done.

Um, yes. Um, but these are Christian people putting this type of, of stuff out.

And I go ahead and take that down. But anybody who watched what happened just has to look at that and go, okay, so much for that guy.

Uh, do you really expect to be taken seriously when you do something like that? I think this man's a reformed

Baptist. I'm, I'm actually sort of wondering what church do you go to?

I'd like to, have you, did you show us to your elders? Because they will probably know that I'm an elder in a reformed

Baptist church. Do you think about that? And then we have this one.

Um, then we have this one. Uh, this one, you should, do you have it now?

This one? I, I, I, I truly love. I truly love. I didn't know about this, but a ratio

Christy group invited Shadid Lewis to come speak and have a, ask a

Muslim evening at one of their get togethers. And so, so think about it.

This is different than what Yasir Qadhi and I did, because you don't have the second night here.

There's no Christian going into a mosque, being asked by the Imam to explain the Trinity.

It's not even, even Stephen, you've just got a

Muslim coming. There's no debate, no refutation, just ask questions.

Now, the criticisms from Brannon House and Sam Shamoon and all these people, my goodness, there should be exposés about this

Ratio Christy group and these people should be identified as demonized false teachers and they're deceiving the church and they're misleading people, right?

I mean, I mean, Keith Thompson should have a video out about these guys. Instead, we have this.

Sam Shamoon, December 4th, 2015. Ratio Christy invited my favorite

Muslim apologist, Shadeed Lewis, to lecture on Islam and answer questions.

Having met Lewis and his wife, I can say that he and his spouse are wonderful human beings who are, should be quite gracious and loving.

Please pray for them and their children that are merciful and compassionate, Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I imagine it goes out from there to say, withdraw them to themselves, et cetera, et cetera.

Now let's just think for a moment here. My favorite Muslim apologist.

Okay, when will the videos be out from Keith Thompson of Sam Shamoon with the beard and the turban?

Koofy, whatever it is. When's that going to be out, Keith, if you're consistent? We know you're not going to be because you write for Sam, so we know that's not going to happen.

When's that going to happen? When's the uproar? When's Robert Spencer going to be going after all of Ratio Christy for having

Muslims in to just simply answer questions from Christians? When's that going to happen?

If it doesn't happen, y 'all are a bunch of hypocrites, aren't you? Yeah, you are, and you know it.

You know it. But here's the funny part. You see, that Sam Shamoon, I remember well.

He was my friend. That was November of 2015, December of 2015.

Almost exactly one year before something happened, and I don't know what it was.

But see, I know that Sam Shamoon, and that Sam Shamoon really did want people to pray for Shadid Lewis and his wife, as would

I. I've had friendly encounters with Shadid Lewis myself. If I were to do it now, that man would jump down my throat.

But he didn't back then. Who's changed? Not me. Not me.

There is documented evidence that all this stuff has nothing to do with the theology.

It has nothing to do with what actually happened with Yasir Qadhi. This is personal. This is the politics of personal destruction.

It's all it is. It's all it is. No question about it. Fascinating. Fascinating.

Now, we're out of time. I'm actually going a little over. I didn't have time to, but I'm going to try to get around to it.

What I was going to do is contrast some of the material. There's a lot of material online. Usama Dakdak, a graduate of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, how he interacts with people in debate, and how

I interact with people in debate, and how he utilizes the text of the Quran in debate, and how I do.

Because you see, what I did today probably brought more understanding to Christians about that section of the

Quran than Usama Dakdak has ever brought to anybody by his Arabic citation of a text combined with the idea that there's no such thing as good

Muslim and every Muslim is demonized. Now, by the way, there is a proper context for saying there's no such thing as a good

Muslim because there's no such thing as good anybody outside of Jesus. But unfortunately, that wasn't the context that he was using.

So, I realize for certain people, what

I did with the Quran today, they were like, oh. For most of the people who've been criticizing me on Facebook and joining in the attacks, and I'm just this terrible whore, that one poor lady on Facebook that now has that with me with the turban and the fake beard as her current

Facebook picture, oh my goodness. What a sad life that is. What a sad, sad life that is.

For people like that, they don't want anything over 30 seconds about Islam.

They have no interest in knowing truth. They have no interest in ever reaching out to these people. All they want to do is yell and scream, you're all a bunch of terrorists, go away.

That's all they want. They were never going to like me. And if their hatred toward me makes them feel better, well,

I'm glad to be of service to you. Glad to be of service to you. What an amazing world we live in.

For the past week, every morning I get up, the first thought in my mind is, what slander will

I encounter as soon as I turn the computer on? What slander? What personal slander?

But at the same time, has anything, I can't think of anything that has clarified motivations more than this past weekend.

I really can't think of anything. There are people who have ministries to Muslims.

They have absolutely no interest whatsoever. Well, they love to have converts, but the idea of investing yourself, actually putting your heart out there, risking, because it can be very risky, risking yourself.

No, no, no, no. It's not that we didn't know this before. I learned a long time ago.

It's a sad thing to realize, folks. There are people involved in apologetic ministry that have all the wrong motivations.

I learned that with Mormonism a long time ago. Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, yeah, exact same thing.

That's why I love the long -term people that have demonstrated that they're in it for the right reason.

Sandra Tanner, oh man, there's a life well -lived. And she's seeing the fruit of it now too.

I love following her on Facebook almost every day. She's talked with some Mormon and another one sees the truth.

Another one sees the truth. Bill McKeever, another guy, spot on. Does it for the right reasons, puts himself out there, loves.

That's the key issue. Are the people that do that with Muslims? Yes. The people that don't, sadly, as we've discovered big time.

So one last thing, since I'm already over anyways. To my Muslim friends, I've tried to put yourself,

I've tried to put myself in your shoes, what you're looking at. First of all, you all know, you've got your politics on your side of the fence too.

And I know that. I've been to South Africa enough times. And so I know,

I know about the politics. And I've never used that as an apologetic argument, have

I? You guys have got a lot of bumping heads and stuff like that.

But I recognize that you would have a valid point in saying,

Hey, look, if these people are willing to so grossly misrepresent one of their own, lie through their teeth, edit videos, take little snippets, ignore what comes for eight minutes beforehand and three minutes afterwards and turn it up on its head.

If they're willing to do that, don't you think they might be willing to misrepresent us just a bit too?

Yep. No question about it. No question about it. No argument from me there.

Can't argue it. That's true. But I hope and pray that even in the midst of all that, even in the midst of the fact that I just,

I just walked through a section of the Quran and I said, this is wrong.

This is an error. There is misunderstanding here. At least when

I say it, I hope that when you hear me saying that you're hearing the words of a person that, you know, even though you disagree with what

I'm saying, we have to debate it. We, you know, that I've shown you respect.

I've done my homework and that I care about you. It's all

I can say. That's all I can do. And I'm not the only one. I'm not the only one. We do care.

We do this for the right reasons. And I hope the conversation will be able to continue.

So there you go. Lots of interesting stuff on the program today.

Lord willing, we'll be back again next week, I think on Monday, on Monday of next week.